Scrambling Sunday

Excuse Me If We're A Little Late

I've just been creating words of wit, wisdom, wonder and whimsy for tomorrow's blog, and you can't just whistle up 1,400 words out of nowhere in a few minutes.  Plus, I took a break halfway through to go and prep ingredients for the Sunday Stew, which I still have to make.  Despite having one portion of last week's remaining, which will probably be okay for Monday.  And if not a good dose of Roast Garlic Chili Sauce will solve that problem.  Art!

     Conrad is a little sceptical about this cover.  No!  Not about the strategically-placed plants and title - just that any parent would be cruel enough to dub their firstborn "Berkeley".  One suspects it's a pseudonym.

     Not only that, the young lady here doesn't appear to have mutually-opposable digits, so HOW DID SHE APPLY HER LIPSTICK?  Or - is it blood?  Nor has she cleaned her talons, which is how you get flies and infections.

     ANYWAY on with the links!

2023

BOOJUM!: The Terror Teethy Of Tbilisi! (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2022

BOOJUM!: Zen And The Art Of S.P.V. Maintenance (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2021

BOOJUM!: Magnificent Mandrake Tropism (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2020

BOOJUM!: გამარჯობა (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2019

BOOJUM!: VodKAPOW! (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2018

BOOJUM!: A Forty Foot Mosquito With A Biscuit (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2017

BOOJUM!: Doomsday! - Er - Delayed (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2016

BOOJUM!: It's A Matter Of Time (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2015

BOOJUM!: This Is Starting To Worry Me - (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2014

BOOJUM!: Conrad's Trip To The Big City (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2013

BOOJUM!: Long Gone Dated But Still Vindicated (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

It's A Tragedy

NO!  Nothing To Do With That Falsetto Disco-Dirge

I ought to level you and your neighbourhood for assuming that, you utter pikers*.

     No, today we are going to touch on the subjects of population geography, rolled tobacco products, serial graphic art - which you may deign to call 'comics' - the pig as a source of scoff and finally the works of the Barb Of Avon.  Quite an eclectic mix, you ought to agree.  Art!

Note the artist.  There will be a quiz later.

     This isn't remotely what you think or expect, i.e. a jingoistic banner-waving paean to South Canadian exceptionalism.  Conrad has a few copies of it in the Comic Mountain, which would take too long to recover to prove.  It will do as a scene-setter and traffic-driver for the moment.

     Now, if I were to say to you "hamlet" you'd probably wrinkle your brows and begin to yark on about the Barf Of Avon and h

     STOP RIGHT THERE!  Do you see a capitalised "h"?  No, you do not.  Art!

     This, gentle reader, is a 'hamlet', which has a somewhat elastic description as being smaller than a village, without it's own church.  The word is of fourteenth-century origin, being derived from Old French 'Hamelet', itself a diminutive of 'Hamel', which has it's roots in the Teuton language.

     Let that be a lesson to you about jumping to conclusions.

     Now, if I were to say "Hamlet", you would, once again, jump in squarely with both feet, eager to show how much (or how little) you know about the Barm Of Avon and his st

     STOP RIGHT THERE!  You jump to conclusions faster than a flea with St. Vitus Dance.  No, this is not about the Barn Of Avon.  Art!

     Yes, they are a form of cigar.  I did mention rolled tobacco product.  I shall have to resort to teh Interwebz as Your Humble Scribe may consume alcohol as if 'twere water (is that Shakesperean enough for you?), but tobacco products are a foreign country to him.  They are made from tobacco leaves originating in Brazil, Cuba and Java, and were marketed as being especially mild.  Art!

     Their adverts featured a man getting into a pickle, as Gregor Fisher above, and finally resorting to a Hamlet for nicontinic solace, with Bach's "Air On A G String" playing out at the end.  Gregor's advert is probably one of the funniest ever made and should you doubt me, check it out on Youtube.

     Now, here is where Howard Chaykin comes in.  Art!

"Shakespeare for Americans" courtesy "Heavy Metal"

     Conrad remembers reading a few of these when he was collecting HM back in the Eighties.  They are a sly satirical dig at the short attention-spans of Howie's fellow South Canadians, condensing "Hamlet" down into 6 fames on a single A4 page, and in a trope they are familiar with.  Which is quite enough for me.

     Now - finally, I can hear you saying to yourself - we get to the Lard Of Avon and his play, which is formally known as "The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince Of Denmark".   Conrad has never read it, thank the Lord aloft it never came up in either 'O' Level or 'A' Level English literature, and never intends to, because it sounds like a right buzzkill downer.  Art!

Mulder and Skully?

     There is much ado about royal succession, not to mention plenty of murders, and political intrigue, and the Norwegians also play a part.  SPOILER ALERT!

     It seems all the main cast end up dead, which is a good thing, because the Bird Of Avon liked to come back with sequels: "Henry VI" has two of them, which is definitely taking the pitcher to the well far too often.  Conrad is also highly suspicious about the cast's names: Hamlet, Claudius, Laertes, Fortinbras - none of these sound remotely Danish.  Are there any Haralds or Agnethes or Dagmars in there?  No.  They do have Yorick (see above picture) which is similar to 'Jorvik' and as close as I suspect Shakey Bill ever got to a genuine Danish name.  Art!

     There were films made, which I can't be bothered to go into as my patience for the Danish Royal Family only goes so far.  Art!

     - because pigs are made of ham, and this is a miniature pig, along the lines of a pullet or eaglet, hence 'Hamlet'.  I rest my case.

Which Part Of "STATIC" Did You Misunderstand?

One thing that all missile and rockets intended for space exploration have to undergo is a 'Static Test Firing', where the engine is firmly mounted on a stationary test bed, which allows it to ignite and sustain a burn.  This allows precise measurement of engine dynamics, fuel consumption, pump operation, exhaust products and so on.  Art!

     Tests are normally done with the engine horizontal, at least in the initial stages, which may progress to a vertical orientation.  Art!

     The Populous Dictatorship suffered a horrendous accident at a vertical static test firing recently, where their Tianlong-3 suddenly became - well, non-static.  Art!

All is well

Suddenly all is not well

Tianlong makes a break for it

Unsuccessfully

     It did seem to come down beyond the firing point, so any staff still on site and not sprinting so fast as to make Usain Bolt look like an elderly and infirm tortoise may have survived.

     Others, including Conrad, noted that there was no remote destruction of the rocket once it took off.  Crossing one's fingers and praying is not really any substitute for a Range Safety Officer.

Um - What?

This caught my eye as an obvious oxymoron.  You know Conrad, hair-splitting pedant par excellence!  Art?

     Surely, if you are paralysed during sleep, YOU CANNOT DO ANYTHING!

     Besides which, if you're asleep, how do you know you're paralysed?  Or are they referring to a speculative third party, enjoining them not to dump a bucket of cold water all over you?  And, as a third party observer, how do you know that the sleeping person is suffering from sleep paralysis?

     This raises far more questions than it answers.

"City In The Sky"

Arcology One is now in it's final descent onto the Nullarbor Plain.  Unless something goes hideously wrong .....

     Slowly, slowly - imperceptibly at first, the Lithoi base-ship grew larger.  From a brown dot it became a brown circle.  A tiny discolouration on the land beside it grew into a minute crater – the site of Dart Three’s death-dive, understood Davy.

     Fifteen minutes to landing.    

     Fourteen. 

     Thirteen. 

     Twelve. 

     Eleven.

     ‘Okay, Infrastructure – blow the water tanks,’ said Davy into his Tab.

     A waiting technician in the Infrastructure control room clicked open a protective panel, turned the button through ninety degrees and pressed it.  A ripple of dull vibrations quivered everyone’s feet and Davy saw a massive drizzle of white obscure the view below completely, before the water gradually fell lower in a scudding curtain.

     Six hundred seconds to landing! and his heart beat even faster.  So close they couldn’t fail!

 

     For the Lithoi who fled the Bridge, loss of face was compounded by loss of function.  The cloud of steam that sent them scattering in panic had condensed on half a dozen computer terminals and shorted them out completely, besides blowing out most of the lighting in the Bridge’s centre.  Their method of removal was slow, necessarily so because no threats that Arkan made or hinted at could force his lessers to confront dihydrogen monoxide in liquid form.  The Bridge was sealed off, it’s temperature raised to the maximum of sixty degrees Centigrade (comfortably hot for the Lithoi) and the air-conditioning and dehumidifiers were turned full on.

     It's only water.  Well, to you and I.  To the Lithoi it's liquid death.

Conrad Unsure Of Technical Reason For This

This was to have been another example of a robot starship capable of exploring out nearest star systems, namely the 'Pegasus Mk II'.  For no good reason I can discern, the pictures aren't loading properly.  Let's see if I can load any of them.  Art!

     I believe this shows the bow of Pegasus, with a fusion engine pointed along the axis of flight in order to manage deceleration when they approach the target star.  At a guess I would say the big red 'sails' are for radiating off excess heat.  Not sure where the mission payload sits.  Art!

     This looks like a comparison between the second stage of Daedalus (at top) and Pegasus, which is a real monster if those dimensions are the same for each ship.  Perhaps those glowing 'fins' are the radiators?  Though that begs the question what the red sails are for.  Art!

     Close-up of the Pegasus engines, which don't appear to be working, the better to avoid actinic blindness I guess.  Sadly no blurb to explain any of this, pilgrims.

Finally -

Better end this blog for tomorrow being created today and get to work on the Sunday retrospective.  Chin chin!

*  Conrad not absolutely sure what a 'piker' is, bar it not being a compliment

Real Life Intervenes

Conrad Apologises - A Little - For Saturday's Slipped Schedule

I am actually typing these lines as of early Saturday evening, but there is no way I'm planning to post them later tonight, as the blog won't be ready until nearly 22:00 if my creative ability runs true to course.

     So what happened?  Art!

ATOMIC DEATH ZOMBIES!

     You may question the veracity of this claim, and you'd be right, I just wanted a dramatic picture to hook the audience in.  Reality, as in real life, is considerably more mundane, and here's a more applicable picture.  Art!

     Far less exciting.  

     You see, I had an appointment with Darling Daughter and Quiet Tom in Warrington, to belatedly celebrate Father's Day, generally chinwag and catch up on things.  So, the first step was the 409 into Babylon Lite (Oldham if we're being formal) and dismount at King Street, in order to catch that amazing modern pantechnicon, the Metro tram, into Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell.  Art!

     The seedy grey skies o'er Metro's King Street stop.  I didn't have to wait too long and there were plenty of seats, which makes a nice change from a year ago heading into work where it was dive through the opened doors the instant there was space in order to leap into an empty seat.

     Here an aside.  Yes, already!  I was reading "The Big Sleep" on the tram and had my trusty notebook with me, in case I encountered any 1939 pop culture references that needed interpreting.  There were several.  

     " - took it into chancery' as describing a fight between Marlowe and Carol Lundgren, one of the seedy characters involved in a murder (one of three so far).  Art!

     It happens to be a boxing term, meaning to get the opponent in a headlock, so one can either pound them with the other free fist, or simply choke them.  I did guess it was along these lines, though it's nice to be vindicated.

    "Torcher" as a female's previous occupation.  Hmmmm, no, one suspects this does not mean a professional arsonist.  There's lots of definitions; the one I think most appropriate is 'Torch Singer'.  Art!

A sleazy singing strumpet, then.

     "Bartop Radio" Your Humble Scribe suspects this of being a semi-portable radio, unlike the great big enormous ones used domestically.  Art!

Summat like

     Then it was off to 'Fopp', where they didn't have either "The Invaders" nor "For All Mankind".  They seem to be pushing Blu-Rays and 4K HD a LOT, which is annoying and will lose this customer if they continue.

     Fortunately "Travelling Man" on the way to Piccadilly Station redeemed the wretched retailers of Gomorrah-in-the-Irwell.  Art!

     I may go into this lot in more detail once I've read them, because we have more of my mission to mention.  Art!

     En route to Warrington, having left Piccadilly Station behind us, this is the only other stop on this journey at Oxford Road.  Thus the journey was pretty speedy, getting into Warrington Central just before 13:00.  Art!

Platform 2

     Then it was a case of waiting by the station steps for Sal and Tom to turn up.  All 3 of us were over-dressed at this point, because the clouds mostly rolled away and the sun came out, heating up the ambient temperature to at least 32º.  Maybe 31º.

     Then it was off to eat, and I remembered to get a photo of the happy couple as I gave Sal "Feed".  Art!

Aptly named!

     Then it was a quick tour of Warrington's Art Gallery and Musuem.  No photos, I'm afraid, as a lot of the exhibits were in low-light environments and Conrad didn't dare used flash photography.  One chatty sojourn at Starbucks later, I was off home on the train.  This is where I managed to load today's afternoon blog onto Facebook; Twitter, however, completely defeated me.  I could only read Tweets, not post my copy-and-pasted URL.  Art!

"Suddenly, Elong was attacked by thunderbolts!"

     You will know my wrath, Elong Tusk.

     My plan had been to tram it from Piccadilly to Albert Square, and then catch the Rochdale-bound tram from there.  Fate and the Bee Network had other ideas.  Art!

     So it was a loooong walk to Exchange Square.  I have done 11,445 steps today, which is a little compensation.

     There.  Today's events laid out for you, which explains why BOOJUM! has been off the boil, buddy.

Your Retirement Fund Is Going To Take A Hit, Matey

We have mentioned Zeno's outstanding novel about Arnhem a few times already: "The Cauldron".  NO!  Nothing to do with cooking - the Teuton term 'Kessel' has been translated here for a situation where the British paras were cut off and surrounded, without the slightest intention of surrendering.  

     The book has long been out of print, and it goes for silly prices on E-Bay and Amazon.  Art!

     First of all, that's a South Canadian G.I. on the cover, not a British (or Polish) paratrooper.  Secondly, note how Rip-Off Ronnie is charging £23.27 P & P for a small paperback book, whilst Relatively-Reasonable Raymond is charging only £4.67.  You'd expect to pay £23 for a very large hardback book, pal.

     O what's this I found?  Art!

     That is the sensible and logical British dating convention, meaning it will be out in print as of the 12th of September 2024, for £11, in Waterstones.  What price Rip-Off Ronnie's £360 total after that?  Art!

     Yes, that Al Murray.  He has a keen interest in military history, perhaps unsurprising as his dad was a Colonel in the Parachute Regiment.  Al has selected TC as one of his choices to read extracts from on the podcast "We Have Ways".  How does 'Zeno' know the incidents are real?

     Simple.  He was there.

THIS WILL NOT DO!

Conrad, as you should surely know by now, is tolerant only up to a point.  After that he spouts fire and brimstone, mashes the Remote Nuclear Detonator until the button breaks and then vilifies everyone on Blogger.  Art!

     This is far too South Canadian!  A giant festive parade?  NO!  We're British, Dog Buns!  We don't exhibit strong emotions.

     When I take over, there will be three gents in pinstripe suits and bowler hats.  One will have a drum, one will blow a trumpet - perhaps a trombone or saxophone if I am feeling generous - and the third will carry a banner.  Nor can the banner be larger than 3 feet by 6 feet.  Their route will have to include the Hungarian Embassy (15 minute stop), the Iranian Embassy (30 minute stop) and terminate at the Ruffian Embassy (until 03:30 next day).

     You may petition me to have a single drag-artist dancer in attendance but don't get your hopes up, because the Grey Empire (I invented that all by myself!) abhors bright colours.

     If you squeak at this, just wait until the ballfoot seasons starts .....

"City In The Sky"

Arcology One is in the terminal stage of it's descent onto the Nullarbor Plain in the Australian outback.  If things go according to the Doctor's plans, then the 'terminal' will only involve their descent, not the Lithoi response.

     Bright sunlight also leaked into the sphere at a dozen points where the metal shielding covering windows had buckled or warped in the atmospheric entry or descent.

     ‘Davy, check the radar return.  How long till landing?’ called Emilia, daring to move about in the open, having discarded her protective wicker cage.  She’d been scurrying about examining the inner ends of the sphere’s cross-bracing, noticing shearing in the protective bedding, and lateral flow in the rubber.  Not surprising, given the stress the makeshift structures had been inflicted with.

     ‘Just over twenty minutes,’ replied Davy.  They were directly over a small brown dot on the Nullarbor Plain: the Lithoi baseship.  Not being up-to-speed on particle beam weapons, Davy had assumed from the Doctor’s hints that being directly above the aliens meant Arc One couldn’t be fired upon by them.

     The Doctor’s last breezy instruction on the loaned Tab had been about water: Arcology One needed to dump it’s water reserves when about ten minutes from landing.  The scions had argued about that: how they had argued!  Voiding five hundred tonnes of water meant relying on what they could get from the environment, and nobody was able to guess or estimate what potable supplies they’d be able to acquire if or when they landed.  It was also a one-time only gesture: blowing the seals keeping  water contained would cause irreparable damage.  Nor did the Doctor explain why they needed to dump water.  Most assumed because doing so lessened the mass of Arcology One and the less mass on final terminal impact, the less damage suffered.

     Well, yes, except our favourite Gallifreyan works in at least two different ways at once.

Here's More People Pondering About Festivities

Glastonbury 2024 is in full swing this weekend, and by all accounts has had the blessing of the weather gods - Aeneas I'm looking at you - with things being chilly and overcast on Friday but nice and sunny for Saturday, at least to begin with.  Art!

     Conrad recognises quite a few of these acts and has records by some of them.  HOWEVER - a word you knew was going to crop up - I would far rather listen to them in the comfort of my Sekrit Layr than a potentially muddy field being rained upon for eight hours at a time.  I remember seeing a broadcast when The Who were playing there, with a shot from inside the tent showing rain coming down like fence-pickets.   No thank you!

Finally -

Hmmmm well, musicals are definitely getting banned under the Grey Empire.  Ballfoot, too.  Music festivals - persuade me otherwise in the Comments.

     Time to start on 'Saga'.

Vat69nik

This One Will Take A Bit Of Explaining

They often do, don't they?  Your Humble Scribe is broadening his literary horizons with that classic from 2,000 years ago, "The Aeneid", and also expanding his knowledge of arcane South Canadian argot by getting even further into "The Big Sleep".  

     What do they have in common?  Well, for one thing, their respective audiences would have been quite at home with all the contemporary references therein.  Conrad, on the other hand, is a tad lost and has needed recourse to Google.  Art!

     Bear in mind that the novel came out in 1939, and the film above in 1946, with the whole of the Second Unpleasantness in between, with all the background baggage that added.

     "Yes, but - Vat 69 and 'Nik'? whoever he might be?" I hear you query.

     PATIENCE!

     What is the 'Mann Act'?  Because Ol' Ray mentions it in the text.  People at the time would have known what it was.  Not I.  So: it was previously known as the "White Slave Traffic Act" and was intended to outlaw the transportation of women for - gasp! - 'immorality'.  Which was a bit vague.  Art!

     These, gentle reader, are 'automatic elevators', which get several mentions in the text.  Why, I pondered, did they get the description 'automatic'?

     Because up until the end of the nineteenth century an elevator - more prosaically know in This Sceptred Isle as a 'lift' - required an operator to move between floors.  With an automatic all you needed to do was get in and press a button.  Less romantic, perhaps, but of more utility.

     'Ether and laudanum'.  Conrad could tell thanks to context that this is a combination of rather naughty substances, and whilst an audience in 1939 (or 1946) might understand what they were, Google in 2024 is your friend.  Art!

          Laudanum is opium in a high-proof alcohol base, and ether is an anaesthetic which gins you up before you pass out.  Knocking back a thimble glass of it would probably put you on your back.  Art!

     This is where things start to draw together, because 'Vat 69' is high-proof alcohol, being a blended scotch.  Conrad was somewhat surprised to discover that it's still around, which is explicable as I'm not fond of scotch at all, don't buy it and don't inspect bottles of it during the weekly shop.  Art!

     Your grandchildren might need to be informed about what a 'Vatnik' is.  In case you've been living in a submarine environment at the bottom of the Challenger Deep, you may not have noticed that there is a breed of Ruffian who stoutly supports their country in ultra-jingoistic fashion, despite (or because of) their lack of intellectual firepower.  Art!

Vatty looking a bit hammered

     Evil, cruel and malicious Westerners - like Conrad - take great delight in mocking the vatniks and causing them to weep copiously, leading to memes about 'Vatnik tears'.  Art!

     'Vatnik Soup' is the Twitter trope title created by an evil, cruel and malicious Finn called Pekka Kallioniemi, whom counters vatnik disinformation and is heartily hated by them as a result.  You may not be able to resolve details on the label, which declares it to be "American Pale Ale", rather than a salty broth.  What a relief.

     Conrad, being matter-of-fact about these things, immediately asked what proof it was, because that's a cold, hard, empirical fact, rather than any nonsense about taste or flavour or guff like that.

     Well, I suppose I'd better bring in a bit of Virgil since his work got mentioned in the Intro's intro.  Art!

     I've just finished Book Seven, where Aeneas and his Trojan exiles end up on the shores of Italy, at the mouth of the Tiber, called the 'Thybris' here.  Juno, who cannot stop meddling in human affairs and trying to put Aeneas down, has brought about a meeting of Roman tribes to wage war on the Trojans, and we get a brief description of various leaders and the tribes and cities they come from.  Art!

     This is Aventinus, whom readers back then would have recognised as the son of Hercules and the priestess Rhea.  He rode to war in a chariot, wearing a whole lion-skin, leading soldiery armed with javelins, 'fearsome pikes' and the Sabine throwing-spear, which Virgil describes as having a 'round tapering point'.  If it tapers to be round, that's not going to do a lot of damage when it hits, is it?  Art!

Deadly sharp throwing sticks

     Again, I bet contemporaries knew exactly what Ol' Virg was on about.  Conrad remains rather baffled.

     I think that's enough sharp pointy things for one Intro.  Next!

Conrad Guesses Again

Yes, another spaceship brought to you from the "Interstellar Research Centre", this one under the title 'Icarus - UDD'.  No expository blurb about this one, again, though there is a diagram breaking down the construction and engine design.  Art!

     Guessing here again, that there's a ballistic shield protecting the payload at the bow, with tanks of reagents and an engine with engine bells to stern.  Art!

     This isn't one of the enormous previous designs, being less than 200 m long and 150 m at the widest point.  They mention "D to UDD conversion" which might mean "Deuterium" as we are talking nuclear fusion here and you tend to need one of the isotopes of hydrogen to manage that particular process.  

     I found a webpage for Robert McSwinney, who is one of the Project Icarus people, with a clutch of degrees and master's qualifications.  He still doesn't define 'UDD' but does mention that "D" is plentiful, non-toxic and far, far cheaper to produce than He³ (the isotope of Helium you need for nuclear fusion).

     Aha!  Thanks to "Atomic Rockets" - an absolutely outstanding resource for the science in sci-fi - we now know that "UDD" means "Ultra-Dense Deuterium".  This is ONE MILLION times more dense than normal deuterium and you can classify it as possibly-to-be-Obtainium.  Art!

Potential UDD reactor

"City In The Sky"

Arcology One is now in the most dangerous phase of it's descent, coming down directly over the Lithoi's base-ship - and it's annihilating thermal cannon.

Once it landed, gravity would take over and cause the fusion plant in the smaller part of the dumbell to fall to earth as well, braked by that same parachute.  Doubtless there’d be extensive structural damage, rendering the sphere incapable of sustaining life – which is where Alex caught his logic failure, because once down on Planet Earth, Arc One didn’t need to sustain life.

     The Captain, having a background that dealt in weapons and warfare, studied Arc One as it came down with a slowness that made her curl her toes in dread.  The Lithoi still had their beam weapon and an estimated twenty minutes to bring it into action.  The sphere’s additional layer of what must be heat-shield might fend the beam off, but that parachute was frighteningly vulnerable!

 

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE:Rain Rain Rain

      The sphere had suffered it’s first casualties of the descent when two Lexan window panels had shattered, sending hard-edged plastic pinging around the interior.  Nothing lethal, just a score of shocked crew with gashes and gouges.  There had been a brief, violent tempest as air in the sphere equalised with the atmosphere outside, creating a blast of condensation; fortune favoured them, since the outside pressure was relatively high and the worst effect was sore eardrums.  Davy shut his eyes and gave thanks to any deity watching over them: if those panels had blown whilst they were in the upper atmosphere, they’d all be dead from hypoxia!

     Brace for impact.

Meanwhile, In South Canada .....

I believe the debate between an old man and an even older man is underway, none of which is going to be available for us in This Sceptred Isle to view until the small hours of Friday morning, by which time Conrad will be copping zeds and catching up on his badly-needed beauty sleep.

     "The Daily Beast" has a sly idea to keep people's interest.  Art!

     "Tapper" and "Bash".  Did they search out these presenters deliberately?  Enquiring minds want to know!

Whilst Skirting That Event

I am now going to post another update on the share value of Trump Media And Technology Group, which has only a single medium that's not up to much technologically.  Art!

     'Tain't looking good for the Flabby Farting Felon.

Finally -

By the times these lines greet your sight, it out to be Saturday, when Conrad is due to rendezvous with Darling Daughter for a somewhat delayed Father's Day meet-up.  There is said to be a library and museum in the mix.  I shall report back.