The Terror Teethy Of Tbilisi!

Bear With Me On This, It's A Bit Of A Stretch

Let me start by adding in a visual pun for you.  Art!

Do you see wh - O you do

     You see, I am watching "Extraction 2" on Netflix, which is where the crack about 'teethy' comes in, because everyone not only fears The Reaper but also The Dentist.  

     The first part is set in Georgia, and you might well be thinking 'Ah yes, brown bears - hang on, do they have them in the Deep South of South Canada?'

     Well spotted!  No, they don't.  There are black bears in Florida that occasionally cross the state border - bears are notoriously unfussy about observing formal boundaries as established by Hom. Sap. - but the brown bear doesn't live that far south.  Connect the dots; would you really like to be wandering about in temperatures of 32ºC in summer, wearing a fur coat you cannot remove?

     No, you see, this is the other Georgia.  No.  Not South Georgia.  That's a British dependency in the South Atlantic <sigh> Art?

     I am talking about the Trans-Caucasian nation whose capital is Tbilisi, which ought to have given you a clue, seeing as it's in the title.  Does it really seem to chime with cities named 'Atlanta' or 'Savannah'? because it's landlocked and mountainous.  Art!

Old Tbilisi

     Georgian is one of a cluster of languages spoken in the region and has it's very own crazy alphabet, which, if Art will put down his fork and coal-

     I know, I know, it looks as if Ol' Tolky had been doodling another language to grace Middle Earth with.  Nope.  Genuine alphabet.

     ANYWAY One of the many, many things that Your Humble Scribe dislikes immensely about films is that people get shot, stabbed, blown up, bludgeoned and variously subject to battery, yet five minutes later they're back in the fray as if it was merely a scratch.  Art!

The Exemplar, who may be a Knight Templar

     I don't think I'm spoiling anything if I tell you that Tyler, Chris Hemsworth's character, survived the ambiguous ending of 'Extraction' where, having been shot several times, he fell into a river (which might even be the Ganges-Padma).

     His unconscious carcass is rescued from the river, treated and then flown to a presumed private hospital in Dubai, where he gradually recovers from a practically comatose state.  

     All told, it takes him over ten months to recover from his injuries, with lots of physio involved.  Conrad approves.  This is realistic; you don't leap from your bed and do a double-Marathon five days after being shot and drowned.  Well, perhaps in the case of Captain Scarlet, but he is an exception.  Art!

     Conrad has only seen the first 24 minutes so far, and would have fared far better than that unctuous Georgian politician as I am both creative, imaginative and an utter coward; my fertile mind would have come up with a plan.

     Not only that, they have dressed ancient Georgian buildings to pass as Tkachiri Prison, making it look picturesque, when the real things have a grim Stalinist Brutalist modern architectural feel to them.  Art!

Art

Life

     I'll let you know how we get on.

Darwin Award Runner-Up

We here at BOOJUM! have, on occasion, pointed out the gene pool outliers that remove themselves from being able to procreate by, not to put too fine a point on it, killing themselves.  I think the most demented one was a Filipino chap trying to use an angle-grinder to open up an unexploded 250 lb bomb,  They were able to bury what was left in a matchbox.

     ANYWAY there are some folks who only get an Honourable Mention, meaning that they're not dead yet, but there is the distinct possibility of achieving the DA later in life.  Art!

     This is one of the hot springs at Yellowstone Park.  Observe the boardwalk with waist-high fence that keeps people away from the superheated springs that can hit 200º C.  One pair of idiots recently climbed off the boardwalk, sauntered over to the hot spring, and one of them dipped their fingers in it.

     They then hot-footed (do you see what I - O you do) back to the boardwalk, the parboiled one shrieking about how hot the water was.

     Colour them lucky.  The edges of the springs are the least-hot part of them.  And the edges are also dangerously friable, liable to collapse into the spring if they have pressure applied to them.

Poland: Safely Distant

Not only is it on the other side of Europe, what we're looking at today is also thankfully distant in time and is unlikely to be repeated. 

     I am talking, of course - obviously! - of Polish film posters, which enjoyed several decades of influence before dying out when the Sinister yoke fell from their shoulders.  Art!

     By Jacek Staniszewski.  Because of course.  Heaven only knows what Jacek had been imbibing or smoking when he did the preliminary sketches for this. Art!

     And here he is again.  One can see what the inspiration is here, if not perhaps exactly what or how the person depicted is going to do all that natural killing.

"City In The Sky"

The nuclear drama 'Downstairs' continues, not between Taiwan and China, as expected, but in the Middle East, always a bit of a powder keg.

Before he could sample one of the crimson fruits, his Tab buzzed urgently.  When he took it out of his coverall pocket, the Emergency light blinked.  His stomach clenched in a spasm of fear: had the reactor malfunctioned?

     ‘Hello?’ he asked, swallowing. 

     ‘Kouroush?  Get over to the Communications Suite straight away!’

     ‘What -’ he began, to an already-severed connection.

      By the time Kouroush arrived in the now-crowded building, panting and sweaty after a prolonged jog, matters Downstairs were coming to a head.  He edged forward to see the screens, before turning to face Virginia Branson.

     ‘The Iranian military government has launched missiles from – where is it?  Natanz – at Israel.  Time of impact estimated at seven minutes.’

     She felt a sense of bitter failure fall over her like a cold blanket.  The Arcology was only up to two thousand seven hundred population, a quarter of their anticipated target – and now it looked as if those missing thousands would never come.

     The tall, distinguished-looking Iranian felt his blood run cold.  His jaw gaped in horror and incomprehension.  For several seconds he felt physically unable to speak.

          Is this the Big Crash?  Well you'll just have to wait and see, won't you?

"Inside Russia" Rolls The Dice

I patiently took notes from Konstantin's analysis of the latest Ruffian economic figures, where he made 10 points about how the Ruffian economy is doing very badly indeed.  Whilst lying about it by sins of omission.  Art!

     That's from the days when he really did live inside Ruffia, and he had to be very careful about exactly what he said and how he said it.  Now in exile in Uzbekistan, he's enjoying the cuisine of Tashkent without having to worry about being imprisoned or mobilised, or imprisoned and then mobilised.  Plus he can say what he likes, and since his chosen subject is economics, he's had no shortage of topics to talk about.

     I shall only go into his first item:  1) "Comparing Apples And Oranges".  The Ruffian Ministry of Finance is trying to claim that the economy in April and May of 2023 is doing realllllllly well.

     As Big K explains, they do this by comparing these months with April and May of 2022, when the economy was in a dreadful mess after the Three Day Special Military Operation turned into a Three Month Special Idiotic Operation.  Art!

     He goes on to further explain that, if one compares April and May of 2023 with April and May of 2021 - a year before the SIO - the economic figures are extremely bad.  Sorry to our Faithful Four Ruffians in the audience out there, but truth will out.

Finally -

Payday tomorrow!

    Well, hopefully.  Things might have gone a little pear-shaped with our transfer from Serco to Another Coyly Anonymous employer.  Better go check the balance.

     Pip pip!

Indy Five

Hundred

Ha!  You should have seen your face.  As we all know by now, Conrad is not one given to observing motor racing, since cars whizzing around a track ad nauseum feels like cruel and unusual punishment rather than entertainment.  

     However, in what seems like either serendipity, or synchronicity, or the Coincidence Hydra on the prowl, Conrad does remember a quote from one of his favourite films, 'Apocalypse Now', where Captain Willard, the professional Army killer, is informed that his mission is to neutralize Colonel Kurtz, who has become  1)  Barking mad and 2) A murderer.  Art!

Er - yeah

     In his inner monologue, Willard cynically compares his mission with a motor race - " - charging a man with murder in this place was like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500.'

     Which naturally begs the question: what is the Indy 500?

     It is more formally known as the 'Indianapolis 500-Mile Race' and is held around South Canada's Memorial Day - which is itself held in May and is the South Canadian's version of our Remembrance Sunday.  The venue is the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, which if Art will get off his waffle-patterned posterior -

     The track itself is 2.5 miles long and dates back to 1909, when the track was based on bricks.  As a memorial*, the start line is the only part of the track that  still possesses this original brick surface, which must put a bit of a strain on any tyres and suspensions that cross it at speed.  Art!

     The number of cars is strictly limited to 33, who line up at the start in a column three wide, and whose engines adhere to a convention of V6 engines of 2,200cc capacity, generating up to 750 horsepower.

     Here's the kicker.  To complete the race, drivers have to do 200 laps.  No, that's not a typo; they have to drive 500 miles at speeds in excess of 200 miles per hour, possibly so the audience's attention doesn't wander too much over the span of two and a half hours.

     And, boy, is it ever popular!  The audience can reach up to 300,000 people and with the cheapest ticket costing $59, the total take is probably about $20,000,000.  

     ANYWAY of course we have to get back to what you were already wondering because we had Harrison Ford in that first picture, are we going to praise or lambast "Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny"?  Art!

     Neither, as I've not seen it and don't intend to.  They ought to have left well alone after Indy 4 and from what I've heard they exploit the old comic's trick of 'bait-and-switch'.  This was where a comic run would have terrific artwork for the first few editions, and then the original artist couldn't keep up with the schedule, so the publishers switched to a considerably less-able artist who could crank out inferior product on demand.  Art!

   
     It seems a cynical ploy from the studio to inveigle in a successor to Indy so they can churn out lots of money-making sequels and roll in boatloads of cash.

     I know what you're thinking: "It's only a film!"

     It's only an EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE film.  Budgeted at $300 million - or 15 times  Indy 500's takings - and with at least that much spent on marketing and distribution, it's going to have to clear something like $750 million merely to break even.  And I'm being conservative here, others (who patently hate the film and may just have an axe to grind) put the break-even point at $900 million.  Art!

     This isn't an impossible target, TGM reeled in $$1.5 billion at the box office, but it's budget was only (!) $175 million so it had a lot less financial pressure to perform.

     IJATDOD opens this Friday and there will be a lot of scrutiny as to how it performs and whether that performance can be sustained.  Expect a lot of suits to have an anxiety-stricken sleepless weekend!

Arty-Farty

Those of you familiar with Conrad's taste in art ought to be aware that it aligns along styles like lithography rather than classical oil painting, probably because of the sheer definition of works such as those of M.C. Esher.  Art!

     However, Your Humble Scribe is also a fan of Gustav Klimt, the Austrian artist who initially began his career doing photo-realistic depictions of classical mythology, which were technically excellent but stylistically barren.  Art!

     He broke the mould with depictions of sensuality and passion, particularly using bright shades of red and gold.  Art!

     And, fittingly, the last painting that he was working on before he died has been sold for an enormous sum: $103 million (or one-third of an Indy 5).  Art!

'Lady With A Fan'

     Hard to believe that this painting is over a century old.  Plus, we here at BOOJUM! are glad of the fan, as otherwise Lady would be NSFW.

"City In The Sky"

It's one thing to watch the world indulge in a minor nuclear war, and quite another to be able to do anything positive to either halt or mitigate it.

     Dovid looked across the whole panorama of screens before replying, taking out a pair of steel-framed glasses that gave him a slightly odd look, a gardener trying to be a scientist.

     ‘Ye-es.  Those launches, I bet, are from the Javelin anti-missile missile system.  You only picked them up because we are directly over the launch sites.  Otherwise they’re too small for Arc One to track.’

     ‘Are they nuclear-tipped?’ asked a voice.  Dovid took his glasses off and chewed one leg.

     ‘Nuclear, no, not at all.  But to pick up the launch – I think they must have fired off every missile they have, to create a signature large enough to be seen from orbit.’

     Kouroush stood back from his hydroponic tomato bed, feeling pleased with himself.  They were coming along well, the tomatoes – his tomatoes – and tasted nearly as nice as his parent’s crop, that   taste from a distant childhood.  Unlike some of the sphere’s residents, he didn’t ever forget that he lived on the inside of a delicate orbiting artificial habitat; being one of the five nuclear energy experts aboard kept one firmly grounded in reality.  Growing food crops had been a suggestion from the Israeli, Weitzman, as a way of reducing tension.   And it worked!

      In real life, a lot of the physicists involved in the Manhattan Project left their field to go into biology, feeling that they didn't want to be associated with a field that might destroy the world.

I Told You So

You know, for a republic, the South Canadians have an unholy fascination with This Sceptred Isle's monarchy, none more so that "The Daily Beast".  EVERY SINGLE EDITION will have an item about our Royal Family, and here's today's picture to prove me right.  Art!

     I am pretty hazy about who, exactly, William and Kate are, although I'm pretty sure they don't live down the road at number 437.

Ladies, Gentlemen And Those Unsure

I give you - the reciprocating saw!  Art?

     This is the battery-powered version, thus able to be used out in the wild, if the fancy takes you.

     Don't forget:  

• Wear safety goggles
• Use a sharp blade
• Be aware of where your hands are
• Hold with both hands
• Watch where the power cable is
• Don't use near flammable materials

     You should now enjoy years of fun with your reciprocating saw!

Finally -

They didn't have any fresh mint in Morrison's tonight, so that Mint Julep will just have to wait.  Maybe next week.

*  Do you see wh - O you do.

"DO NOT MAKE THIS EXPLOSIVE!"

How Could I Resist?

Conrad is unsure exactly how he got to this particular internet rabbit-hole on Youtube, yet he did.  Possibly the feeds detect an interest in Things Exploding?  Regardless of how, there I was, looking at a cautionary advisory.  Art!

     For your information, 'TATP' stands for Tri-Acetone Tri-Peroxide, and the Youtube channel in question is the frankly bonkers 'Ordnance Lab', which features a couple of chaps who are not just obsessed with blowing things up, they want to entertain and educate we the public as they do so.  From a passing comment about "Officer Armour School" I suspect one of them has been in the South Canadian military.

     They may be - what's the word for a person morbidly obsessed with explosions? - aha!  'Ekrixphiliacs', but they DO emphasise safety in their pursuit of chemically-composed destruction.  Note this extract from their Youtube channel's 'About' page:

"WARNING: Ordnance Lab LLC is an ATF licensed Destructive Device & Explosives manufacturer, and is registered as a manufacturer of Defense Articles with the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). Ordnance Lab LLC does not sell firearms or explosives. Do not attempt to do anything we feature in our videos, as it may result in your death, serious injury, or arrest."

     True to form, they deliberately avoided explaining how to make TATP but I'm sure you can find a perfectly trustworthy and reliable recipe on the Dark Web.  Art!

     The thing about TATP is that the precursor chemicals are fairly easily obtained, which is why the bottomhole above was trying to create a bomb in order to murder cheerleaders (I kid you not).  He did not treat his TATP with the tender loving care it so very much needs, and consequently is minus both a hand and his liberty, as he will be inside a prison cell for the next seven years.  Art!

TATP is also known in Arabic as "The Mother Of Satan"

     This is the makeshift grave of those terrorists in Barcelona, who scored an own goal thanks to, again, mis-treating TATP.

     What makes it so dangerous?  Sensitivity across a number of physical criteria is why.  Art!

     Basically, this stuff is looking for a way to explode every second of it's existence, and the OL chaps prove this, first using a lighter - Art!

Note 1) Protective glove and 2) Small sample size

     You get a slightly less dramatic result if it's hit with a hammer, or scraped on a rough surface.  

     Danger demonstration done, the OL chaps decided to illustrate how effective TATP is as an explosive, by taping a small bottle onto a metal oil filter.  No doubt they attached the bottle verrrrrrrrry slowly.  Art!

     The chaps confirmed that this was merely TATP in a bottle, which gives a lower brisance (explosive forced measured in metres per second), probably half that of a similar but compressed amount.  The thing is, compressing TATP is really, really dangerous; it does not play well with force being applied to it.  Art!

Blast off

     I notice that he's holding the now-battered stout metal filter with all his fingers and both hands, so this safety thing must have benefits.

     Right!  I am off to see what the difference is between 'Deflagrate" and "Detonate".

Ooops

Conrad bestirred himself tonight and made a load of pizza dough, pizza sauce, sliced chorizo and grated cheese.  I've not made a pizza for years and wasn't even sure the yeast would froth as it's 'Best By' date was <coughcough> January 2023.

     But it did work and I was trying to flip the pizza to get it onto a backing tray and  -

     I dropped it.  Art!

     This is the somewhat mis-shapen mass that resulted.  Most of the topping has gone and the dough where it's all bulged up didn't cook properly, but it wasn't that bad.  Next time I'll wrap it around the rolling pin in order to move it.
     One lives and learns.

"The War Illustrated"

Don't forget that, for the Allies, the campaign in Italy is the only ground war they are able to wage in Europe.  The Sinisters were always whining and complaining about this, except they didn't lift a finger to fight the Japanese in the Far East, the pikers.  Art!

     Here you see the egregious idiot Mountbatten (in the peaked cap), who had an ego indeed as big as a mountain, and who was responsible for the disastrous Allied landings at Dieppe.  Here he appears in the Far East, where he was probably shunted to keep him from committing havoc in Europe.  Piker.

     Ah yes.  The landings at Anzio.  As you can see from the map, the idea was to land a large amphibious force well behind the Axis lines and take them by surprise, cutting their lines of communication and marching on Rome, taking the Axis forces in the rear and by surprise.

  Yes, that was the plan.  Enter South Canadian Major General John Lucas .....

"City In The Sky"

From the allusions Conrad has detected, it seems the author has posited that the theocracy of Iran has long since gone, replaced by a military dictatorship, who evince just as much dislike of Israel as their predecessors.  Or they wouldn't have launched a nuclear missile attack on them.

     Normally, the sensitive detection systems of the sphere would have picked up a terrestrial launch from almost the whole of Earth visible from orbit, then plotted an increasingly accurate track of the missile’s trajectory as more observation refined the data.  This time, there was no correlating missile track after the launch warning.  Davy felt flustered – the detection systems couldn’t be making false-positive warnings, could they?

     ‘I have the Iranian missiles inbound on a sub-orbital track, moving east-west over Iraq,’ read off Natalie.  ‘No trace of the Israeli missile.  I wonder – could it be stealthed?  Radar-invisible?’

     ‘No,’ said a voice with a heavy accent and a determined tone.  Summoned by an Emergency call on his Tab, Dovid Weitzman had arrived in the Comm Suite.  His loose plastic coverall didn’t disguise his stocky build, nor the tense expectation in his posture.  Dovid’s official Arcology qualifications were horticulture, botany and fertilisation, even if he knew far too much about rocketry, ballistics and nuclear weapons for a humble biologist.  ‘You should get Kouroush in here.’

     ‘He’s coming,’ said Constanz.  Kouroush’s qualification applied to nuclear physics; like Dovid, he had an uncanny and in-depth knowledge of rocketry and ballistics.

     ‘You were saying about the Israeli launch?’ prompted a Deputy.

     Corks, things are looking bad for Hom. Sap!  It's at times like this that you need the services of a travelling monster-slayer and problem solver, doncha think?

You What?

Conrad suspects that his flirtation over several blogs with table saws, carpentry accidents and generall chopping wood has caused a few algorithms to pay attention, because that's the only explanation I can think of for this item cropping up on a webpage.  Art!

     For one thing, 'Festool' sounds vaguely unclean, and Your Humble Scribe is having a hard time imagining what he'd use a reciprocating saw for.  Frozen bread?  Nor am I that au fait with what a reciprocating saw is; presumably a power tool where the saw blade moves back and forth at many times per second, making it potentially useful against the walking dead, as long as you can muffle the noise?

De Profundis

I Did Try A Couple Of New Fonts -

'Merriweather' and 'Yanone Kaffesatz' but they were much too small, certainly for my aging eyes.

     Yes yes yes, it's Latin for 'From The Depths' and I think there's both a poem and a sci-fi novel that use it as their title.  Art!

Close enough

     The news of late, where it has not been goggling over what on earth's going on in the land of the Ruffians, has also been speculating about the destruction of a pocket submarine, the 'Titan', in the ocean's abyssal depths.  We did touch briefly on this yesteryon, which is being expanded here with more room to move.

     Many years ago, BOOJUM! did a series of items looking at the exploration of the oceans deepest places, possibly because I'd read "The Kraken Wakes" too often.  There were items about bathyscaphes and bathyspheres and the Challenger Deep and the Marianas Trench.  One thing I do recall is that the deep-diving submersibles used tended to be spherical in shape, as this is the design best suited to resist pressure at depth.  Art!

 The proof

     Another anecdote I recall is from a popular science book, which stated that, at the bottom of the ocean - I can't remember which one - the pressure was so great it would be as if a 14-ton truck were driving over every square inch of your body.  Uncomfortable, to say the least.  Art!

As used late in yesteryon's item

     That gives you a bit of perspective.  The 'Titanic' is two and a half miles deep, where the pressure stands at 400 atmospheres; one atmosphere being the pressure at sea level.  The old lady is falling to bits and won't be recognisable as a ship for much longer, which isn't too surprising given that she's been down there for well over a century.  Art!

     The stern has completely gone and the bow section is collapsing in on itself.  One commentator over on Quora said that it's much, much safer to watch it on a television screen by using a Remotely Piloted Vehicle, sipping a mint julep (whatever one of those is) and sunning yourself on deck.  

Less picturesquely, there will be very little to salvage from the 'Titan', because when a hull loses integrity at that depth it will implode in milliseconds and the best spin one can put on it is that it was instantaneous.  None of that Hollywood nonsense about hull creaks, sprays of water or tense looks, just BANG.   

It's also rather ghoulish to go noseying around what to all intents and purposes is a giant steel coffin.  A Chinese salvage ship has gotten into very hot water because they plundered the wrecks of the 'Repulse' and 'Prince Of Wales' over in the Far East, not least because both are registered War Graves.

     Next thing you know there'll be a grey market in items 'recovered' from the Big T.  No I do not want your filthy stolen silver service!  Art?

As The Penguin might have said

     And with that, feeling that for once we hold the moral high ground, we shall move on.

Bring On The Stew

As you should surely know by now, Conrad makes up a big batch of scoff on a Sunday so he can have it for lunch during the week, and this Sunday was no different.  Art!

     I didn't have much meat so I bulked it out with a whole cauliflower.  Also this was the first time I'd cooked with a Sweetheart Cabbage, which is much looser packed than a White Cabbage and shreds nicely.  Spiced up with just the right amount of red jalapenos.

     Perhaps it would be more fitting in winter but I have made it and I am Dog Buins! going to eat it.

You What?

Conrad has been puzzled by curious-looking devices being promoted on Quora as having suffered a price drop.  They have a certain seedy air about themselves that make me look askance, and determine not to click on whatever they are in case we end up in some porn-and-meds-flogging corner of teh Interwebz.

     Then there is "The Daily Beast".  Art!

     What on earth are these?  And no, I'm not going to click on what seems to be the poster child for 'clickbait'.

     Answers in the Comments, ta very much.

"City In The Sky"

As I introduced the last section, things are going pear-shaped Downstairs, with an apparent theatre nuclear war about to break out.

     ‘Perhaps they can’t afford more,’ suggested Natalie.  The general’s junta had mismanaged Iran’s  economy into utter chaos; her comment wasn’t too far-fetched.

     Screen Six still displayed the scrolling message from Tel Aviv.

     ‘Good God above!’ exclaimed another Deputy, arriving late in plastic pyjamas.  He squeezed into the overcrowded one-room building, looking appalled.  ‘I go for a nap and the world blows up!’

     ‘Not yet, Mister Barclay,’ said Davy.  ‘We’ve about fifteen minutes until the missiles hit.’  Other radio frequencies were now beginning to cut through the Israeli broadcast, all simultaneously alarmed.

     ‘I’m looking for any Iranian broadcasts in Farsi,’ explained Davy.  ‘On official channels.’

      There were no official broadcasts.  He looked up the five different wavelengths in a sub-screen of Screen Six, confirmed he’d got at least one right from memory and scanned them again.

     ‘Ahum,’ he said, thinking aloud.  ‘This is strange.  The Iranians began this by firing missiles, but there aren’t any kinds of warning on their state radio.’

     By this time Arc One was over the Negev; Screen Seventeen’s hateful little red light began to flash again, “Terrestrial Launch Indication”.  Behind Davy, the Controllers and Deputies began to talk in low tones, eventually making more calls on their Tabs.  Their conferring came to a halt when first one, then another noticed the warning signal on Screen Seventeen.

     O dear.  Clearly someone thinks it's a good idea to roll the dice and gamble on being in a nice deep bunker.

Imagine This In A Southern Drawl

No!  Not a Cockney one, a South Canadian one.  Art!

     This, Vulnavia, is a Mint Julep.  It consists of bourbon, which is a species of whisky, I understand, ice, sugar-syrup, lots of mint leaves and a hefty-handed shaking.  It is associated with the South of South Canada, thanks to the bourbon, apparently.  You can understand why 'mint'; 'julep' has an interesting background, as it derives from the Moorish 'Julepe', meaning a sweet drink used to deliver medicine, which itself derives from the Farsi 'Golab', which means 'Rosewater'.  Colour Conrad cocktail curious.  And it's the weekly shop on Wednesday.

     If I do make it I hope it's better than the ghastly Mojito I made a couple of years back.  Good lord, it was horrid, bitter as gall and it was a struggle to neck it all!

Finally -

I finally put together my new works monitor, which is a particularly beefy Dell one, after realising it came with two data cables and I'd been staring in bufflement - which is like bafflement but worse - at the incorrect one.  There aren't enough sockets to permit the headphone and mouse to be used, so we'll have to see which proves the better item.  Art!

     Laptop powered down, as otherwise you would see the log-in screen, with my real name WHICH WE CANNOT HAVE.  Also G4S might be a bit cross with me.