A Series Of Unconnected Events

Today, After Having "Themed Blogs", We Have None!
     Yep, can't go spoiling you too often, and besides, it's hard to think of a common thread that can bind the whole typewritten souffle together.

Cool, but not quite what Conrad meant ...

     One possible post, about KLM and their silly toucan-driven advert, fell before the first post.  In fact it dropped dead in the stables - nowhere is there an image online of this bus poster advert.  I made a point of writing down the phrase - yes, I do always carry a pen and notebook around just in case circumstances like this arise - "Keep an eye open for KLM world deals".

REM.  Close enough

Bus Poster Inspiration
     Until a few months ago, bus posters were items that Conrad scarcely knew existed.  Now they help provide instant inspiration for the blog, apart from the one that's mostly in Chinese about a phone service - I think - and no, it doesn't travel around Manchester's Chinatown, it whizzes up and down Rochdale Road, where the only Chinese are to be found in a couple of takeaways.  Hmmm.  I do sometimes wonder about human beings and their sense of logic.

Can't find the advert, so have a trio of narwhals instead.

     "Escape Plan"
     This happened to zoom past Conrad on his walk to the car park.  What caught my swivel-eyed attention was the release date "Out in October".
     "Eh what?" I mused.  "Oh.  Brilliant! This film has gotten free early and is being shown six months early."  Then I reconsidered.  "Oh.  Dreadful!  It's taken them six months to get free."

Early?  Late?  Only you can decide!

     "The Quiet Ones"
     Just so you know this is a horror film, it had text about how it was made by the <insert random film production job here, yea, even down to the man who picks up cigarette butts in the car park with lazy-tong scissors>.

"The Woman In Black"?  A TV fashion show, surely?

     Ah. Yes.  The terrifying quiet ones.  They are so pant-wettingly frightening because they're so - quiet?
     I'm not so sure about this as a title.  If it had been "The quiet ones - watch out for them" then, yes, I could go with that.  Even "The Quiet Ones With Silenced Guns" would work - they're quite because of the silencers, Q.E.D.  "The Silent Stabby Ones" also works, as knives have no moving parts to make a noise.

The Big Palooka
     Not a phrase that one meets every day, is it?  This popped into Conrad's Long-Term Memory Overflow Box.  "The Big Palooka" was a comic-strip from the now long defunct Victor, featuring Jim Ransom, a British detective sergeant on liaison with the New York Police.  He looked rather like Jeeves -

- but behind his back - a machine-gun

     - which tended to give the bad guys the wrong idea, as he was as cunning as a barrel full of monkeys.  In one strip he posed as a market vendor, daring the racketeering bad guys to ram his fruit stall with their car in order to smash him and stall into bits, and ram it they did, hitting it at thirty miles an hour!
     Only to end up in bits themselves.  The "stall", covered with white sheeting to keep the fruit clean, was actually a pair of reinforced concrete blocks weighing in at a ton each.
     Actually that seems like a scenario Jeeves could have dreamed up ...

"Really, sir?  Really?"

     Oh, alright, probably not.



Dan, I Apologise For Doubting
     During this lunchtime I was exchanging witty banter and sage advice with Mike (droll Scouser, newly a dad) and Dan (Team Chatterbox, no competition).  Somehow we got onto the subject of sloths, and then Dan piped up with a statement that sloths and giant anteaters belong to the same phylogenical* family and that a man had recently been clawed to death by a giant anteater.
     Well!  Dan was entirely correct, as this news link proves:

http://thedailyherald.com/index.php?option=com_content&id=46426%3Aman-killed-by-anteater-&Itemid=5

     That'll teach me to wonder and ponder, and also not to mess with giant anteaters.

Awwww! Baby giant anteater riding on the back of it's mum.  Seconds later, it killed the photographer ...

* Before today this may not have been a proper word. It is now.

I Paste In Haste About The Taste - of MUSTARD!

Yes, Tonight BOOJUM! Has Another Theme: Mustard
     Why not?A bit of a challenge, stringing together a blog about it.  Also it's Pub Quiz in an hour, so my time is further limited, and I'm baking Fruit Gingerbread - which I'd better go check as the tin it's in is larger than the recipe called for -

 - it seems done, good job I checked and didn't leave it for the full 60 minutes.  
     What follows is technical and rather dull unless you like baking.  It also lacks mustard, but it does have ginger, which has quite a bite of it's own.
     Anyway - the recipe called for a 7" square tin, which would make the batter 49 square inches in area.  I only have an 8" square tin, meaning it would actually be 64 square inches in area.  A difference of 15 square inches, almost a third of the recommended area - so Conrad is aware that the baking time will be correspondingly shorter, and indeed at 40 minutes (two thirds of the recommended time) it did indeed seem done.
     I've tented it with foil, poked some holes to let steam out and will go back in a few minutes just to make certain it's baked through.

Hilarious or scary?  Only you can decide!

Mustard
     A condiment not liked by Darling Daughter.  "Gross!" was her comment, and it did not vary when I recounted the different types.  She's not going to shift on this "Mustard is evil" attitude.

Custard.  Close enough

    
     English Mustard
     This comes either as a paste or a powder.  Behold:

Mustard the dastard

     Why the difference?  And why does Conrad keep both in the cupboard?  Because mustard powder is used as an ingredient in any number of savoury dishes.
     
     Dijon Mustard
     We probably introduced the French to this whilst we were giving them a bit of a shoeing at Agincourt.  Here you are, Dijon mustard:

Now, in "Wayne's World"doesn't Wayne ask a gent in a Rolls-Royce if he has any of this?

    Sweet Mustard
    Yes, this does exist, and they eat it in Bavaria.  Lo:

Damn!  It looks like something crawled onto the plate and died there!

     Coarse Mustard
     Conrad's favourite type!  In this variant the mustard seeds are not all ground, giving a notably textured condiment.

The epitomy of deliciousness

Colonel Mustard
     From the game "Cluedo", don't you know.  The elderly, Brylcreemed ex big-game hunter, and this is the only true version of what he looked like:

Accept no trendy modern updates!

     I'm not that sure he really was a colonel, you know.  I shall have a word with my people at Debretts and get back to you on this.

"He's mustard"
     A quote from "Snatch" - worringly a film now 14 years old - about Brad Pitt's character, who takes and delivers punches quite as ably as he ever did in "Fight Club" - sorry, shouldn't have told you that, should I?
     Anyway, The Stath* is on the phone to the dodgy boxing promoter about Brad and states those two words about him, meaning that he is hot stuff in the ring.

Bad pit.  Close enough

Fun With Extremely Dangerous Chemicals!
     Here Conrad refers to "mustard gas", technically "1-1 thiobis (2-chloroethane)", nicknamed after the condiment because impurities in the manufacturing process make it smell that way.
     This appalling stuff wasn't invented accidentally by some bored chemist thinking "What can I blow up/poison/disintegrate today?"  No, it was invented by German chemists in the First World War.  At room temperature it's a liquid that gives off fumes that cause chemical burns, most especially to any moist parts of the body - eyes especially.  It causes temporary blindness a la that sober picture by John Singer Sargent:


     It has absolutely no use except for making people ill and miserable, so if your chemistry flatmate ever says "Let's make mustard gas!  Tremendous fun!  Cleans stubborn stains!" you have Conrad's permission to defenestrate him.

Turun Sinappia
     Ah, now this is obviously - obviously! - a Hungarian car made under licence from Skoda, and is a handy little compact useful for nipping around the twin cities of Buda and Pest, with good mileage to boot.
     What's that?
      It's not?
     It's the Finnish company that makes mustard in Finland?
     I should have seen that one coming.

The end.  After all, it's <ahem> Finnish