A Man Who's Merry - Courtesy Gene Roddenberry

Here He Is, The Original Hoodie
I speak of course of Jean Luc Picard, who in this iteration looks less "hard" and more "Bard", as in that git from Stratford Upon Avon.

His cap has a tendency to slip.  Nothing to keep in in place, you see ...

     Here is a man with more hair on his chin than on his head.  Courtesy of Q, that meddling superbeing, who could at least have granted him a few filled follicles.  Why inflict Robin Hood on the Enterprise bridge crew?  Well why not!
     Q - also know to the scriptwriters as "Dorothy's Red Shoes".  Impossibly silly plotline?  Ridiculous premise?  Insane character? - wheel on Q without further ado*!

You What?
I had to take a screenshot of this.

The Twits outdo themslves

     What the fnorp is a "Wileyfox"?  Why does it cost £129? - for what appears to be a little black box with a light on.  You can pick one of those up at a car boot sale for 50p.
     I'm not desperate to know, but if you care to enlighten me I'd be obliged.

The Psychological Importance Of Hats
Conrad has pondered on this subject for a while.  Let me fill you in on the story so far ...
     You might remember the Cold War, if you were born before 1991.  During this time the Mighty Red Army was actually a colossus with clay feet, stricken irretrievably with inefficiency, corruption, nepotism, chronically bad equipment, a economy about to collapse and a population only able to cope with Soviet reality by drinking rivers of vodka.
     However, although the Soviets were streets behind the technocratic West and NATO in nearly all fields, they were several city blocks ahead in one respect -
     HATS!
     Consider this:

Makes every private feel like an officer

     Your average Russian conscript wore an IMPRESSIVE GREAT HAT like this, and as the tagline shows, must have boosted their morale to stratospherical levels.

Look at 'em

     All pumped up and ready to take down the eeevil capitalists and all because of HUGE HEADWEAR.

Mind you ...

A Bit Under The Whip Tonight
This is not at all the same as being "on the lash", which I hope to be tomorrow night.  No, the Great British Bake Off begins at 8 o'clock tonight, and I want to enlighten, impress, entertain and educate the world before then.
     What do you mean, "How?"  By posting tonight's BOOJUM!, of course**.
     This was made rather harder because of First Bus.  Sometimes, when I write about this wretched company, this floccullation of evil, this murder of crows, I feel I should take up a burnished platinum sheet, then load my fountain pen with nitric acid, because only then can I convey my hatred and contempt.  And my hatred.  Did I mention my hatred?
     I just managed to catch the 24, having to fight my way on board amidst a gigantic heaving rugby scrum that consists of passengers waiting for 9 buses.  The 24 got a couple of hundred yards up Lever Street -
     - then it broke down.
     Conrad made his way back to the bus stop - another seething public crush endured, and had to catch the 181.
     Wonder of wonders, just before the big events hall, the 182 had broken down.  So we picked up all those passengers, subsequently making the 181 quarter of an hour late.

A First Bus HR Spokesperson replies:
"A little ssssuferring is good for the soul"

Conrad.  All The Pens
No word of a lie.

All the time

"On Thermonuclear War"
My my, this is a complicated work and no mistake.  Once completed I shall have to read it again to make more sense of the early concepts mentioned - "Counterforce as Insurance", for example, and "Finite Deterrent" as these are mentioned later in the text.  
     Currently I'm reading about what might be termed "psi effects", and here we're most emphatically not talking about telepathy or telekinesis or being able to boil sprouts by thinking at them.
     No, what Mister Kahn means is "pounds per square inch" and he's talking about the blast pressure created when one of the Big Bang Bombs goes off.  He starts his examples with 1/2 psi, which sounds pretty feeble, right?  Except that it exceeds hurricane force winds by a factor of 3.  His most extreme psi value is 500 psi, the kind of overpressure required to pulverise a mountain range, one suspects, especially since NORAD sits inside one***.

After that depressing stuff, have a cute Tasmanian Devil

* Bad scriptwriters!  Naughty scriptwriters! No biscuit for you!
** Less cheek or you get a poke in the eye.
*** Cheyenne Mountain.  The "mountain" part gives it away.

I Say Data, You Look Like A Waiter!

Well He Does!
Not that I mean to belittle our friends in the catering service industry, it's just that an android with superhuman intellect, speed and strength could surely land a better gig than serving mashed potato and grits*?

I'll have a fillet Mignon, please

     I have to be careful and not insult "Star Trek: The Next Generation" too much or too intensely, as Mike and Greg - duty Missile Combat Crew at Pine Forks, Utah - have their fingers on some little red buttons**and if they feel that their iconic show is being traduced by an unappreciative Anglo critic -

What Did I Say About Health And Safety?
Yesterday I was mocking the 1931 "Frankenstein" for it's cavalier attitude to having masses of furiously sparking electrical equipment in close proximity to the cast.
     How little I knew!  At the climax of the film, hordes of villagers, all carrying fiery torches, flock to the windmill that the Monster is hiding in, then set it ablaze -

A roaring inferno.  Lots of fiery torches.  What could possibly go wrong!

     It might be trick photography but that howling mob are standing very close to the burning mill.
     Nor is that all.  When Henry is fighting the Monster in his guardtower, he drops his flaming torch and, whilst being knocked about, actually scuttles over it. Briefly, yes, but for long enough to notice it.  Like a trooper he stayed in character.
     Nor is that all.  Fritz, the mad scientist's wicked assistant, likes to bait and torment the Monster, by waving a fiery torch in it's face - literally in it's face.  I hope Karloff's makeup was fireproof ...

A little harmless fun between friends!

     Lastly, proof that the Germans do, indeed, have a sense of humour -

The Bavarian Slap Dance

     I know what you're going to say - "It's a film made in America, Conrad.  Ha!  Caught you out! Ow!***"
     Those dancers were superb.  They knew that dance intimately.  Therefore they were German extras, who had emigrated to America.
     I win.

Today's Creepy Coincidence Hits Home!
It's Thomas Dog Buns! Pynchon, I swear, reading him causes something to go awry with the universe, causality, the space-time continuum and where the odd socks go to die.
     On page 16 of "Vineland", which I have only read once before and now see as a possible ancestor of "Inherent Vice", there it is, a reference to "Frankenstein".
     I need expert advice here.  Phil?  Phil!

"It's the aliens, Conrad, warping reality around you."

     No, Phil, no - I'm an alien!  Me!

"Who said you were the only one?  Hmmm?"

I Have No Idea
I took this screenshot last night, obviously struck by a really terrific pun - 

Such fertile material

     - come this evening, I've got no idea whatsoever about the pun.

IMAGINE GENUINELY HILARIOUS SPORTING JOKE HERE ABOUT - ER - EXCESS X'S

"The Australian Victories In France"
There, there, don't cry, it's not like I didn't warn you about coming back to this work.
     We start with Intelligence work.  The Aussie intelligence officers didn't have to depend on getting information out of prisoners, as they instead went for their captured postcards instead.  Monash asserts that the average German soldier was an inveterate sender and receiver of picture postcards, which could reveal a surprising amount of information to the seasoned eye.
     Monash also describes the Aussie use of "pigeons".  These were Australian soldiers fluent in German, who dressed in tatty German uniforms, forewent shaving for several days and were then introduced into a body of German prisoners, to eavesdrop.  Upon giving a secret signal they would be released, to tell all.
     This is probably illegal under the rules of war, but one cannot help feeling admiration for such brazen Oz cheek!
     Monash also depicts the ending of "chateau generalship" as it affected him.  Initially in July he and his Corps staff worked in a chateau.  As the Australian Corps advanced, the Corps staff moved to village houses.  Then they resorted to another chateau, a derelict ruin stripped bare.  From there they proceeded to a collection of wooden shacks in the middle of a morass of mud.

What's In A Name?
As you surely know by now, Conrad is one of those people who WILL read the list of ingredients on the back of the tin, or, in this case, the bottle.

The smiling, deceptive front

     And what do we have on the back?

This!  This is what we have!

     Suddenly it's now a "ginger flavour" drink, which somehow didn't get mentioned on the front, did it?  Check that list out - NO GINGER!  In fact it has the hideously-named "glycerol esters of wood rosins" which sounds like the kind of herbicide you'd use to keep aphids off your prize blooms^.

Herbie-cide.  Close enough

* I'm not actually sure what "grits" are but they sound properly American so I thought - what the heck.
** Actually keys, and they're not red
*** That was me, poking you in the eye
^ Actually it's used to keep liquids in an emulsion state.