Seconds Out - Round Two!

You Didn't Think You Were Getting Off That Lightly, Did You?
Come on, come on, you ought to know Conrad better by now.  Sunday means a chance to post twice in a day, an opportunity your verbose* scribe cannot overlook.  There was stuff I didn't get a chance to post earlier thanks to the 60 Minute Limit, and a post already at a thousand words might be off-putting if it got even longer.  Then again, you want more than a bite-sized morsel of mordant wit and weirdness, or so the traffic figures suggest.
     Anyway, let us proceed.  On with the motlei!

Superheroes With Their Pants Down
I'm not going to apologise for the title, the whole world knows by now that BOOJUM! is SFW, so it is obviously  a metaphor.  You hear that, Stan?  Jack?  Brian?
     So, who do we pick on and mock today?  Continuing an earlier theme, and looking at the X-Men: Cyclops.

Cyclops!  For when you want to blow stuff up!
(And look all moody 'n' shizzle)

     Hmmm.  Yes, Cyclops, who is excellent at blowing things up - with his eyes!
     Conrad doesn't know his backstory and is too idle to bother looking it up, so I imagine that Scott didn't get his powers until, say, puberty.  Otherwise his life would have been dramatic, destructive and pretty dismal, all told.  Also, I'd hate to be his optician.
     So, there are many negative aspects that come with having Blammo-vision.  Let's detail a few.
     1) Hen parties: Scott looks the dark, brooding, designer-stubbled Man of Mystery to perfection.  O how the ladies must love him.  However, all it takes is one inebriated member of a clucking brood passing by to decide "What colour are his eyes!" and - a terminal surprise.  From hen to drumstick in one move
     2)  Jobsworth Security Staff: You can picture the scene - there's Scott, trying to get into a swanky Manhattan nightclub, or attempting to travel via La Guardia Airport, and he comes across a little tin Hitler who decides that the glasses need to come off - another terminal surprise.
     3) Passport Photo Booths: Conrad heartily dislikes these things, and Scott is probably their worst enemy on the planet.  "Glasses cannot be worn" blabs the passport requirement criteria.  "Oh well," sighs Scott, and takes his glasses off.  The terminal gets a surprise.
     4) Greasy skin: Conrad's artificial human skin is quite oily, consequently his glasses are prone to sliding downwards over the course of the day.  For me, that's no worry.  For Scott, if he happens to be taking the tube at the end of a working day, this means potentially frying a carload of commuters.  He probably has a bag of industrial-strength wipes as part of his costume accessories**.
     5) Binoculars - or, God help us, a telescope: If Scott is forgetful and accidentally uses a pair of binos or a telescope, utter devastation would ensue.  Imagine his Blammo-vision channeled via the lenses a mile away across a couple of acres.  If he did the same with a telescope and the Moon, he could probably write his name across it***.
     6) Sneezes: again this would be potentially disastrous were Scott to knock his glasses off.  He probably has one of those nerdy retaining straps on the legs**.

"Scott?  The gas has gone out.  Can you flash-fry our - WOAH!"

"Eruption"
Ah, back to being preachy and didactic about words.  Pay attention at the back!
     Where does this word come from?  I don't care if you don't care, you're going to get an education here.
     As is so often the case, this word has it's roots in Latin, "Erumpere" to be precise.  This means "To break out", and transitioned to "Eruptio" and hence to our familiar "Eruption".  Which can thus apply to a volcano or a bout of acne.
     Conrad is also minded of the band Eruption, who had a disco hit with "I Can't Stand The Rain", and he would counsel them therefore to never tour in the UK.

At least it keeps the rain away

A Late Post About More Food
Nothing to do with the very nice Thai Fish Curry as made by Wonder Wifey, rather this is about Conrad's triumphant creation of a Grilled Cheese Sandwich <sound effects: drum roll and trumpets>

Ta-daaa!

     I'd tried to do this the way recommended: buttering both sides of a piece of bread, then grilling it in a saucepan, repeating the process, then adding the cheese, topping with the second piece of bread and continuing until melted.
     The results were rubbish!
     Instead I lightly toast two slices of bread, spread one side of each with marge, add the cheese, then stick it in the Foreman grill for about three minutes.  You see the results above, and it was delicious.  With added sliced mushrooms.

A Bit Of Bovvie
"Bovvie" as any fule knos, refers to Bovington Tank Museum, one of - no, scratch that - the most awesome collection of tanks in the world.  The only significant omissions are an M1 Abrams and Bradley IFV, probably because Uncle Sugar doesn't want you the public to know the sprocket size of the laser battle sights and their OS tag^.

A great big cheque.  Plus a tank.
Everything goes better with tanks.

     That in the background is a British Mark IV tank from the First Unpleasantness.  Art?  I let you out of the septic sump for a reason.  Get us some pictures:

The same tank.  I think this one is actually in working order.

     Conrad, at 6' 1" and weighing in at twenty-three stone, would have been poor material for Mark IV tank crew: 

A tad claustrophobic, one feels

Oh, there we go, the 60 Minute Limit kicks in and once again we have to depart.  If we had an end theme tune here, it would be that of "The Sweeney", a very reflective version of the adrenaline-fuelled intro.

Chin chin!

* Yet creative, am I right?
** But again, probably doesn't like talking about it.
*** Which would be a bad thing, Scott!  Bad!
^ I made this up.  Can you tell?

Blood And Sand! Donner Und Blitzen! Ham And Jam!

I Feel The Universe Is Trying To Tell Me Something
 - via the pages of Brewer's.  Today I opened it at Page 658, and there in the left hand column is "Hellfire Club", established in Dublin in 1735, by a certain Tom Connolly.
     What is Conrad's Official Real World surname?  Go on, take a wild guess.
     Yup, "Connolly".
     What are the chances?
     Oh, I realise that "Ham and jam" is a bit odd, but I believe it was one of the verbal recognition signals for the paratroopers seizing the Orne Canal way back in the Second Unpleasantness.  Just so you know.

Sunday Begins
I'm afraid if you're looking for hellfire you've come to the wrong blog.

Tea!  Crumpets!  Books!
This is as wicked as it gets at the Mansion

     A mountain of books, a pint of tea and a plateful of crumpets with peanut butter.  Although I didn't get out of bed until 9:30*.


"Bleeding Edge" By Thomas Pynchon
I feel a bit like having a tiger by the tail here.  That is the accepted metaphor, although I am willing to bet it's entirely allusional with no basis in reality - no interviews with Mr Patel, aged 35, from Dhakar in Bangladesh about how he was dragged for miles by a Bengal tiger - as it is Conrad's firm belief that grasping a tiger's tail is certain to get said tiger's undivided attention, and that it is agile enough to render the tail-grabber into a collection of dog food, yeah verily.

Go on.  I dare you

     Getting back on track, my statement is because of the cast of characters within; leave it for a day or two and you'll lost track of who's whom. There are (let me crank up my frankly corroded memory here) Maxine; Horst; Vyrva; Heidi; Reg; Windust; Eric; Lester; Jason; Cornelia; Esther; Gabriel; Chester, for starters.
     There are also references that Tom makes, which Conrad simply has to check out, since Tom is inventive and fertile enough to convincingly portray the utterly fictional as fact.  Thus, "Script Kiddie".  This is a real thing, an unskilled agent who uses other people's scripts in order to try and big themselves up in the eyes of the computer community.  Technically deficient, they can be unwittingly destructive as they ponce and preen on the internet**.  

A Festival-Goer's Guide To The Sun
The sun is our local star, a yellow dwarf, and our main source of Infra Red and Ultra Violet radiation.  Here is a picture for recognition purposes:

A sun

     As an attendee at a festival you are likely to be outside for considerable lengths of time and will need to take careful precautions should the sun appear.
     First of all, don't worry!  It is highly unlikely that your festival attendance will be interrupted by the sun, so go ahead and enjoy yourself, bearing the following in mind.
     Firstly, it is possible to protect yourself by shielding your skin from the harmful emanations that come from the sun.  We recommend this:

Note:  air supply is optional but recommended if you have hay fever

     Obviously if the sun is out and you are "busting some moves" you are going to get hot, so having a bucket of water emptied over you every ten minutes is essential.
     The other alternative to a physical barrier is a chemical one, and we recommend this:

Well-oiled***.

     Be warned that an oil bath like this makes group hugs impossible.
     One side effect of having the sun spoil your festival is that the ground will instantly begin to dry up, eventually becoming hard and unforgiving.  So if you've been overdoing the beer and fall over, don't expect the lovely soft comfortable landing on this -

     - because you will, in fact, be hitting this:

     Go have a lovely festival!

A Short Photo-essay About Food
I know what you're thinking, "Oh really, Conrad - padding the post out with a lot of pictures because you ran out of ideas"
     Ha!  As if!  <looks worriedly from side to side> they haven't got a camera in here, have they ...
     Okay, picture the first:

Coleslaw

     Three carrots, an onion and half a cabbage and a huge pile of slaw is revealed, glorious in it's nakedness.  It's not been dressed yet, you see***.
     Mooooving swiftly on, we come to ice cream:

Mixing at work

     This is Lychee ice cream, which didn't thicken in the maker at all, or at least very little.  I did test in once it had gone in the freezer and it is gradually hardening up, if rather slowly - probably no need to put that vodka in to ensure it stays soft.
     And the results of a quick trip to the Co-Op:

Onion batons and date-expired sushi

     That's tomorrow's breakfast and lunch sorted.  I dip the bread in a cup of hot Marmite at work for my breakfast, rather than having breakfast at home, although the management are utterly opposed to people eating hot food at their desks as this will bring about the end of sub-atomic bonding in the time-space continuum or something, so I am a little furtive about it.  The sushi means not having to spend time making lunch, meaning I can devote even more time to the blog, you lucky people you^.

A Little Critical Analysis
It's okay, Paul and Art, you don't need to cower today, instead we will look at a little ditty entitled "Michael Finnegan".

"There was a man called Micheal Finnegan"

Yes, very good, introducing the character.

"He grew whiskers on his chinnegan"

Reaching with the rhyme a bit there.  Go on-

"The wind came out and blew them in again -"

No! NO NO NO NO NO! NO!  The wind speed sufficient to cause horripinjection would destroy the surface of the planet!

"Poor old Michael Finnegan, begin again"

How can he, the world has ended.

What a depressing song.  Did Morrisey or Mr E compose it?

*That makes me a rock 'n' roll rebel, doesn't it?
** Why, that almost sounds like BOOJUM!'s Mission Statement
*** Sorry.
^ You are lucky.  Don't argue.