BOOJUM! Bounces Back!

What Do You Mean, "Was I Gone?"
     As you, my faithful readers, may be aware, yesterday was one of those rare days when BOOJUM! does not hold forth on the weather, weasels, warthogs or Working For A Nuclear Free City.
     This is not because Conrad lacked things to say, nor that he was busy elsewhere, no - a far more serious issue arose.  

WEB BROWSER PROBLEMS!!!*

"Internet Explorer has died on it's arse.  Get stuffed and get lost.  Windows will continue to pretend to do things in the background so that it looks like it's helping.  Later." came up as an error message.

Oh noes! gibbered Conrad.  What shall I do?

Obviously I watched another two episodes of "The Pacific"** and grated a pound of butternut squash, confident that if I ignored the problem everything would be better in the morning.

How Conrad would have looked if he were a duck

Come morning the exact same error message appeared.

Roasted and toasted, should not have boasted!

Fortunately for you, me and that invasion fleet, I already had Google Chrome installed and it was a mere matter of footling around to no avail for an hour before I clicked on that quadri-coloured icon, and here we are.

How glad am I?

This glad.  Positively ecstatic.  Note injured lip after battle with bottle (of shampoo)

I shall now have to grapple with Google Chrome.  Which is rather positive when compared to last night.

Behold the Bake
     The end result of hours spent grating squash:

There's a cake under there, trust me!

I recalled dimly that the tin used last time was far too small, 504 cm2, as opposed to the 660cm2 tin I'm using tonight.  So far only a little overspilled batter.  And Foo! to the recipe's "bake for 30 mins" as it's been over an hour now, hence the foil tent to prevent burning. So the Halloween Pumpkin cake that's not at Halloween nor with pumpkin either is on the way.

So - Tanks?
    No.  No, today you can have this:

Behold Tiglath Pileser III.  Emperor and sponsor of hairdressers, one presumes

Tiglath Pileser, Assyrian Emperor of the eighth century BC.  So there.


And if Anna is reading -
     I expect those mince pies tomorrow, madam, oh yes indeed!

Mince pies, or this kitten gets no fish tonight!

* This is so traumatic that yes, it does need 3 exclamation marks.
**  A misnomer if ever there was one.  This series is more apocalyptic than pacific.

I Paste In Haste

Being On The Late Shift -
     - and on public transport, Conrad didn't get home until 7:30.  Before he realised it, after finishing off "Right Ho Jeeves" and having a spot of tea, besides sniggering cruelly at "You've Been Framed"*, it was already 8:30.  Assembling lunch, unwrapping a book delivery and creating a pasta salad for tomorrow's lunch advanced the hour to 9:30.
     At which point Mister Hand pointed out that - sorry, what's that?
     Mister Hand wants some recognition?  As an essential part of BOOJUM!? 
     O very well!

Mister Hand.  Compact, versatile and able to make humorous shadows.

Can we get back to the narrative?  O thank you so much!  Where were we?  Oh yes, Mister Hand was pointing out that we shouldn't waste time.
     Eh what?  Mister Hand!  What have you just - Oh I give up.

The Perfumes Of Araby
     I think that's how it goes - a quote from Shakespeare's "MacBeth" by Lady MacBeth, who was quite a lady killer.  "All the perfumes of Araby -" cannot get rid of the blood on her hands.  I would have tried Coal Tar Soap and a rough flannel myself, but you know what highly-strung female assassins are like.
     Anyway, here we are:

No it's not a Bauhaus match!

 This is incense, being burned to try and diminish the smell of cerements, the grave and mouldy ceiling paper.  The closest, one suspects, that Conrad's Upstair Lair will ever get to smelling sweetly.  Conrad has no sense of smell at all, as it isn't needed on the icy hell of his alien homeworld in Royton.

Truffle Kerfuffle
     Conrad tried to make Christmas pudding truffles last week, and merely succeeded in making a batch of what looked like sheep droppings that reeked of rum.  Far too poor a fare to pass off on the ganterpies at work, so he has been nobly eating them himself.  There were thirty of the mis-shapen little swine.  Today -

The brown thing?  The handle of a Grommit mug.  Oh!  You meant the sheep sh1t on the plate ...

Okay, finally, since Anna may be reading this (hello Anna!), we need to really manage an Awww! moment.  Without zombie teddy bears, cuddly piranhas or vampire kittens.


Damn.  That's hard. 


Let me think on this.



Aha!  The cyborg laser-eyed sentry cats, powered-off and charging up**

Yes, cute while asleep.  Awake, they can fry you alive in milliseconds.  Milliseconds!

*My Darling Daughter's guilty pleasure, not mine
** Don't worry, the Mansion is still protected by minefields, and the visiting wolves are still close by

The Sorbs , The Wends and Bertie Wooster

BOOJUM!'s Charter To Teach
     I'm willing to bet you never heard of either group before today, have you?  Well, these Eastern European peoples were hot stuff on the migratory front in the 6th Century.  They settled in what is now eastern Germany/Poland.  Their descendants are still around today to the tune of 100,000 people, mainly in the Spreewald area of Germany.
     Why mention this here?  Because the present is a palimpsest* of the past, dear reader.  As Albert Einsten wrote, every step appears as the inevitable consequence of the preceding one.  So!  We here in the UK can expect ramifications down the centuries from the hordes of Eastern European migrants now flooding across the UK in exactly the same manner as our storms.


That yacht is full of Bulgars ...

Caked No Longer Naked
     Yesterday's cakes are now clothed and can be taken out in public.

That's odd - I'm sure there was more of it before.  Could anyone - no, surely not!

 This is the frosted gluten-free carrot cake of yesterday.  Apparently it tastes every bit as good as the gluten-loaded version.

Then we have:

A tad messy.  Don't worry, we'll Photoshop it later

Lemony Olive-Oil Banana Bread (with chocolate chunks and sugar glazing), which is a bit of a mouthful.  More of a cake, to be honest, than a bread.  Baked solely to use up bananas and olive oil, which it did.  The fun part will be lifting it out of the carrying tin!

Jeeves
     Thirty years ago I moved into a flat with Steve, both of us students.  Amongst his books were several whose titles included the word "Jeeves".  I was curious.  What was a "Jeeve"? and why were there so many of them?
     The answer lay in the author: P. G. Wodehouse, who created surely the finest comic pairing in literary history - debonair playboy about town Bertie Wooster and his saturnine, calculating and infinitely intelligent butler, Jeeves.
     I lay this out before you because I got ten Wodehouse paperbacks before Christmas for the princely sum of £5 (instead of £70**) and am now reading "Right Ho Jeeves".  Indubitably frothy nonsense, yes - BUT! - it's the best frothy nonsense money can buy.
     No doubt in years to come some citric academic will lay before us Bertie's wartime exploits with 237 Squadron based at St. Quentin and how he met Company Sergeant Major Jeeves, late of the Ox and Bucks Light Infantry, and - actually - okay I wrote it first, it's my copyright!

Bertie and his first true love

 So - Tanks?
     Yes indeed.  Compare this picture of self-propelled machine guns:

Colour photography in 1940 - verrrry unusual!

With this self-propelled gun:

Freud would be oh so very happy reading this article ...

Truly Tanks Are Not The Same!

* "palimpsest" - an pattern composed of overlay upon overlay, rendering interpretation difficult or impossible
**  Wonder Wifey please take note

Tomorrow: Audubons Book of North American Surds

BOOJUM! - Baking Bad Boy

Not Actually Bad In The Sense Of "BAD!"
     In fact quite good.  Anna - a lady whose name has graced these pages rather too frequently* - asked if Conrad, being the gentleman and baker that he is, could provide a Red Velvet <Something> recipe for her sister?
     Why certainly replied Conrad, not wanting to blow his human cover story.  Using the Hummingbird Bakery recipe book, he discovered that there were two recipes for Red Velvet <Something>.  So, in the spirit of thoroughness, he copied both of them, with some hints about what to do.

Red Velvet Whoopee Pies!  No I don't know why they're called Whoopee Pies 

 More Baking!
     Gluten-free, if you care to know. 
     Here an aside:  on Friday I didn't take any cakes or biscuits or muffins or indeed Whoopee Pies in to work, assuming that folks would be caked-out and fed up of sweet things after gorging themselves on endless stollen, mince pies, biscuits, chocolates, chocolate biscuits, winter whirls, more biscuits and more chocolates.
     Wrong! 
     Sophie and Anna (yes that one, again!) both complained at lack of Conrad's cake.  Fortunately, I had a tin of Emergency Reserve Biscuits from a couple of weeks ago stored in my locker.  They went down famously.
     Back to today and the gluten-free carrot cake.  For your perusal:

Oddly enough, chock full of banana

Other parties insist that the cake has a cream cheese frosting, which means waiting until tomorrow when it's completely cool.  I know, I know, I can hear you chorusing "It's cool already, Conrad!  It was made by you!"
     Not that kind of cool.
     I have also been using up the surplus banana mountain occasioned by our resident banana-scoffer, the hard hog, going off to London to shoot scenes for the - but that would be telling.
     Anyway, the banana mountain.  I made Lemony Olive Oil Banana Bread to get rid of surplus lemon zest (from the Limoncello, if you recall) and Hey Pesto!**

Actually 6' in diameter

Both cake and blog would have been with you, gentle reader, and a lot earlier, had not a 2 1/2 hour power cut intervened.  The messenger mice have been despatched to find out who the culprit is, after which they will suffer horribly be given a stern talking to.

Excuse Me
     Explosions In The Sky!  Maps!  Paatos!
     No, not instructions on how to deal with The End Of The World (although when my invasion fleet gets here you will need to know how).  Bands!  These are bands.
     Along with the PA system at Fopp!, Q magazine and word of mouth, I pay attention to what Grooveshark recommends, since their recommendations are based on what I've been listening to.  I'd say they have a 66% - 75% success rate.
     Music - the one thing that may save the human race!
Also, here find a hilarious skit on the indie music scene:
http://blogs.houstonpress.com/rocks/2011/01/graphic_which_indie-rock_band.php

I recognise most of those bands and even have some of their CDs.  Which makes me -

Hipster Dad.  Note Crown of Awesome.

* No, Anna, you cannot have a credit!  BOOJUM! is mine and mine alone!
** Yes I know it should be "Hey Presto" but I like pine nuts

Typical Friday Night At The Mansion

Which Is To Say -
     The messenger mice are on a sabbatical, the guard hog is out in his hutch, the Ukranian song and dance troupe are rehearsing (and complaining), the wolves have moved on and all radioactive isotopes are safely secured in the Dangerous Kitchen.  Where's the hard hog?  Ah, apparently the next series of "Primeval" - but that would be telling.

Party night at the Mansion.

The Society And It's Journal
     I alluded to this in my Facebook banner-waving and wondered if anyone was interested in finding out more?
     Actually I'm going to tell you more whether you were interested or not.  I'm horrid like that.
     Okay, officially our title is "The Society of Twentieth Century Wargamers", abbreviated to "SOTCW", which doesn't lend itself to witty contractions.  If you come up with one, there may be folding money involved.
     The website:

http://www.sotcw.co.uk/

The Forum:

http://sotcw.punbb-hosting.com/

The Journal - a pithy title that may lack imagination but makes up for it with sheer accuracy - viz:

Artwork by the incomparable Rob Rowell.

All work done by unpaid volunteers.  Our current artistic and creative dynamo (also known as "The Editor") is Richard Baber.  Conrad has been known to contribute on occasion and indeed owes Richard an article.  I shall have to don the creative cap over the weekend and do a book review.

Everyone's Gone To The Moon
     Not quite, not yet.  That Chinese lunar rover, Yutu, has been pictured from orbit by the NASA LRO satellite.  More detail at the ever-wonderful Auntie Beeb:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25559061

And in case you were sitting there, reading this blog and thinking "My life would be shallow and taste of ashes were I not to be shown this Yutu and be shown right now!" -

Yutu. 

Also, you too can Youtube Yutu*:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=yutu&sm=12

Beware of a whole lot of tinfoil-beanie wearing loons, though!

So - Tanks?
     Yes.  Tanks do not come in one size and shape.  Chris, a work colleague, quite an intelligent chap in all respects, did not realise that Not All Tanks Are The Same.  Allow me to demonstrate:

M1 Abrams with Mine Plough.  Not to be messed with.

Japanese Tankette.  Requires 2 AA batteries to operate

Also:

Challenger 2 giving the desert a hard time.  Desert, wisely, does not retaliate

Enough raving militarism!
     Quite.  Let us have something cute and cuddly since Anna - hello Anna! - may be reading this.  What's cute and cuddly, Mister Hand?
     <Mister Hand warns that vampire or zombie soft toys are not, inherently, cuddly>
     Okay Mister Grumpypants!

I'm cute!  And wonderful!  (plus I did not escape from Station Twelve in Antarctica so I am not a shape-shifting alien monster, thank you for asking)

 * Sorry, couldn't resist.

As Promised; BOOJUM! Delivers

No, Not World Domination*
     First subject for debate - the warthog.

Miss Botswana 1997

This beast is clearly not attractive.  It's face looks as if Salvador Dali tried his hand at genetic engineering whilst drunk and juggling a drawerful of knives. Lumpy, bumpy, frumpy, tusky and micro-eyed, only a warthog's mother could love a warthog.  They do not have a very positive media presence.  Just Google Image "Warthog" and you can scroll past hundreds of excruciatingly ugly tuskers.
     And yet ...

Meet Wonder Warthog, seen here relaxing with book and beer

That's quite positive, isn't it?

Also ...  I couldn't find a picture of The Snout Brothers, a pair of steroid-abusing homophobic iron-pumping warthogs from "Father of the Pride", but after reviewing that sentence, they aren't really positive role models.

And of course who can forget <drumroll and trumpets> - Pumba!

Who says the camera never lies?  Contrast this with Photo #1

 From some obscure film by a fringe studio.  What was it called now?  The Lion Thing.  The Iron King.  Ah, it'll come to me in time.

 Excuse me, those bloody Ukranians are kicking up a fuss again!  As if making - actually - they have a point, I haven't thrown food down the dungeon grating since this morning.  Excuse me one moment!

BOOJUM! Mansion's light and airy Upper Dungeons.  Two stars in the Michelin Guide.

 - As opposed to the Lower Dungeons.

THE LION KING**!  I said it would come back.

Conrad's Guide To World Domination
     Lesson Number One:  Keep it secret.
     Lesson's Number Two to One Hundred and Fifty Seven:  See Rule One.


Right!  I have to swot up on talentless tabloid sellebrities for the Pub Quiz, which is in but forty-three minutes.  Tally ho!

* ... Yet
** For a republic, those American are awfully fond of royalty.

BOOJUM! Reviews 2013

I Know, I Know -
     At this time of year there are endless reviews of the past year.  Conrad promises to be different in his non-linear analysis of the 368* days of 2013.

1)  The Year Begins
     Bit of an essential, this one.  If the year never starts - as in the so-called "Forgotten Year" of 1748#2 then you've got nothing to discuss.

2)  BOOJUM! Begins
     Yep, forget about the previous 6 months, nothing worthwhile on Planet Earth happened until BOOJUM! began in June.

3) BOOJUM! added stock photographs
     From text-only to illustrated.  Several countries suffered blog revolutions when this happened.

4)  BOOJUM! adds personal photographs
     Hundreds of blog viewers needed medical attention after this innovation.  Not just pictures - BOOJUM!-relevant pictures!

5)  New Phylae are revealed to the world
     Present at BOOJUM! Mansions we find Sentient Sus Domesticus (the guard hog and his brother the hard hog**), our mutant messenger mice (imagine a weremouse 7 feet tall), the laser-eye cyborg guard cats, giant moles***, land-travelling sharks and wolves.

Okay, that's 2013 done.  Next!

Ice-Cream On The Go
     As any regular reader knows, Conrad likes his ice-cream.  This is either because he has a sweet tooth, or it reminds him of his frigid alien homeworld he has a sweet tooth.  Tonight marks my second attempt at Kulfi, which is an Indian mango ice-cream.  Last time it didn't get processed in the ice-cream maker, nor did I add some vodka, so whilst it tasted okay, it was rock-hard and full of ice crystals.  We shall see what today's batch brings!

Kulfi on the go

Unsung Hero
     Ladies, Gentlemen, Those Unsure, may I present to you one of 2013's better purchases:

The spatula, not the wooden chopping board

A rubber spatula.  This handy-dandy fellow allows you to scrape every last molecule out of a bowl, and also does not scratch non-stick surfaces the way a spoon would.  Especially good for getting the last dregs out of an ice-cream maker bowl.

Now - Darling Daughter is watching "Sherlock" and I need to go spend some quality time with her.  Pip Pip!

* Yes, 368.  Unless, like me, you have the cheat code, you lesser mortals are condemned to suffer a year of 365 days!
**  Stunt double in "Razorback" as he never tires of telling us
*** Bloody pests they are.  We sold one to a butcher, only for it to turn up in "City Of Ember"