Evil Chief O'Brien - No I Ain't Lyin'!

Actually I Am
 - but you should be used to that by now.  Chief O'Brien is the Irish Transporter Chief in Star Trek The Next Generation and The Babylon 5 Rip-Off Deep Space 9.  Here he is being evil:

Kind of.  Sorta.  Okay, not at all.

     Only a hair-splitting pedant would point out that it's actually actor Colm Meaney being a bit of a git in "Alan Parker: Alpha Papa"*.

Right!  Normally the blog begins with a photograph of Conrad's dining arrangements, but today was different.  Viz:

Foliage trimmed

     A haircut so severe it stopped the monster in the cupboard from emerging.  Getting this done at Pepe's meant a long delay in travelling to Manchester, and time constraints prevented me from getting a delicious grilled cheese sandwich at Northern Soul, nor of throwing money at the till in Travelling Man in return for buying comics.
     I did get to Fopp, herein the haul:

"Fury", "Lucy" and "A Walk Among The Tombstones"

     I saw Fury at the cinema, but the other two were <ahem-hem-hem> ones.  However, The Rule is, if I do that and like them, I have to buy them.  So I did.

Cherry Ghost, M83 and the mighty Chemical Brothers

     I've not heard any tracks from Cherry Ghost or the Bros, but the M83 has one of the most infectious dance tunes about people being transmogrified by psychotropic frogs that you'll ever hear.

Doctor Who The Trailer
Caught this on television recently, with the bold, even possibly overstated headline:

BORN TO SAVE THE UNIVERSE

"So - no pressure, eh?"

The Great British Bake Off
I know you may be sitting castigating your humble scribe on how lax and lazy he is, the GBBO being on Wednesday and this being Saturday, but - it's my blog and I can type up whatever I want whenever or not.  Actually I was at a gig on Thursday so the notes didn't get typed up and there wasn't time enough to do it last night.
     Enough pre-amble.  Take up your runcible spoons!
     The theme was that of "Free From", and the Signature bake was to be a cake made without sugar.  So our amateurs would be using a syrupy substitute - honey, dates, agave nectar, treacle and - another first for Conrad that he hadn't heard of before - mulberry molasses.  Typically our anaesthetist Tamal injected his cake with a syringe, which is impressive, although his statement about being rubbish at maths is a little worrying.

Would YOU let him gas you?

     The Technical was a rather tricky one - 12 identical gluten free pitta breads.  Conrad has made the normal version, which was easy enough with a recipe.  Given that the Technical omits lots of important details, making a gluten free version is difficult.  Ian and Nadiya did well, Tamal poorly and I felt sorry for Alvin, who appears not to have ever encountered a pitta bread in his life before.
     Finally the Showstopper.  A dairy-free ice-cream roll.  Pretty tricky as the bakers have to make the ice-cream and the sponge and the jam, and manage their time to ensure that it doesn't fall apart in a deluge of melted ice cream because the sponge and/or jam were too hot.  The background noise of ice-cream machines echoed through the tent, a sound Conrad is intimately familiar with - although these models were top of the range £300 versions.  Alvin's secret weapon was "Buko Pandan", a radioactively green flavouring from the Phillipines.

- it also glows in the dark**

     Here we are only in week four and there are some extremely elaborate designs being tried out here, Nadiya's in particular being quite the artwork.
     Now - spoilers ahead -












I warned you!







Star Baker:  Nadiya     Going Home: Ugne

Time management and heat, remember?

Pens Envy
Yes this is safe for work - go back and read the post title closely.

There you go

     Dom had been cleaning out his locker and discovered a large store of pens, very nearly as many as Conrad has about him on a daily basis.  Don't forget from earlier this week:

All the pens.  All the time.

A Pome For Russell
Russ is moving out of our team and across to People Support, who deal with horribly complex stuff like redundancy calculations.  They get paid more, and deserve it in my opinion because it sounds like stressful work.  Anyway, Conrad threw together a pome for the lad, and don't worry about the ending, this is BOOJUM! and it's all SFW:

A POME FOR RUSSELL

Russell don’t like us no more.

He thinks us all an utter bore,

And he’s sick of being poor,

So he’s moving across the floor

To People Support and earnings galore

Such a job would make me nervous

Dealing with stuff like Death in Service,

Terminations that need reverses,

A workload that brings out curses

And put Russ in need of nurses.

I warn you, Russ, that altogether

People support is heavy weather

You’ll need Dumbo’s magic feather

Nor will there be time to blether

With your favourite Aunty, Heather.

Traditionally, we now wish you luck

But actually Russ we think you suck –

Being a man down means we’re stuck

We can no longer pass the buck.

Russell Prenderghastly, you selfish –

-          Rascal.

      

Whilst not exactly deathless prose, it did raise a titter or two.  Which is as much as can be expected.

Done better today than last night - 3 out of 18 topics covered.  Anyway the time limit has hailed into view again, so -

 - Chin Chin!




* Claims that Conrad himself is a hair-splitting pedant, whilst true, will be ignored.
** And stains the tongue bright green

It's Counsellor Troi! - Eating Some -

- Lutefisk
As you surely know by now, Conrad is an unreliable witness, narrator and writer, whom you simply cannot rely upon to tell the truth about anything, nor to remain consistent in his inconsistency*.  I bet you were anticipating a word that rhymed with "Troi", except not "Poi" as I've used that already.

Well - it might be Lutefisk

Your Humble Scribe Prevaricates
Really, what a couple of days it's been.  I went to a gig last night, staying in an hotel in Manchester rather than risk First Bus late at night, and of course a dinosaur like Conrad has nothing to do with laptops, so the blog post yesterday was a frank copy of that from 2014 post of 3rd September 2014, posted at mid-day.  Not only that, but I've got no Twitter feed at work, so I could only propagandise via Facebook, so the traffic figures today are a bit weak.
     Nor is that all.  Fate, the muse Terpsichore and Oscar** all combined yesterday to be wildly creative yesterday, when I've got no way of posting.
     The evidence:

     There's enough stuff there to last for a good three hours typing, except I doubt many people would be willing to read a post 5,000 words long.

Anyway, Back To Lutefisk
Yes I say, Curtis Le May***!  I bet you're dying to know what Lutefisk is, and even if you're not, you're still going to get told.
     It is Scandinavian for "Lye Fish", "Lye" being what other people call Sodium Hydroxide, a very powerful - and poisonous - bleaching agent.  It's predominantly a Swedish dish, although the Norwegians eat it too.  The Danes are said to have more sense.
     Why the Lye*?  As a preservative, which it does an excellent job of.  After all, young Sven or Gretel aren't going to nick this from the fridge if they get peckish, are they?  No, because it has to be steeped repeatedly for ages to get rid of the lye.

      Apparently it tastes like rubberised fish-flavoured jelly - Mmmm! right up Conrad's street (although probably not yours).

Bitten By The Coincidence Crocodile - AGAIN!
Really, if the Universe has something to say to Conrad, can it not simply send a postcard?There I was, reading "Magic Words", the biography of Alan Moore, with my other novel, "Vineland" by Thomas Pynchon sitting nearby.

It's Thomas Pynchon.  Reading him upsets the time-space continuum

You What?
Those idiots the Twits have put in a splendid Commonwealth Games-level of stupid as of yesterday and the day before.  They don't rate as Olympic Games-level stupid as the Foobs are in hot competition for that title.
     You want proof?  You got it!

Direct your eyes to the mid-left

 "DWTS"?  What in Dog Buns! is DWTS?  "Direct Water Treatment Supplies"? "Doctor Who The Series"?  "Dennis Wheatley's Thrilling Stories?"
     Then there's "Hayes Grier" and "Carlos PenaVega" which sounds like it ought to be five separate people, not merely two.
     These people really take 2D stupid and give it an exciting 3rd dimension, by which I mean <cont. Page 96>
     The second component of today's romp through the fields of arrant idiocy is this:

"Attending Southampton Boat Show?" NO!
NO I AM NOT!

     When, dear Twits, has Conrad ever expressed the slightest interest in the Southampton Boat Show?  Never.    Let me repeat that, except louder this time:  NEVER!

     Why would I want to spend £170 - because I certainly don't know 5 other people willing to pay for this overnight stay - and have to travel to Southampton and back, when I have a bed here in the Mansion?

Well, of the 17 titles present in my notes, and you can go back and analyse that picture of my notebook, I've covered precisely - 1.  Calling it quits for the composing, however, as I need to get this out there in front of people's eyeballs, so we're coming in a little low on the word count^.  I know you'll forgive me this as we're such splendid chums.




* Not sure if this makes sense, but it looks good.
** My memory.  Because - get this! - because he's so wild.  Do you see what I - o you do.
*** An American air-force general.  A bit obscure, I grant you, yet it definitely rhymes.
^ By about 40 words.

Replete With Cheat!

I'm Posting From Work -
As I shall be out on the lash tonight, staying in an hotel and going straight from there to the office, you aren't getting a fresh dose of scrivel.
     No indeed!  You can, however, have the entire post from 3rd September 2014, which is an interesting exercise in consistency, which see below.  Some of the pictures have disappeared, due to Conrad blowing up the internet or somesuch, and I haven't the time (nor, truth be told, the inclination) to reload them.

So, feast your eyes upon sights not seen for three hundred and sixty five days ... oh and it was entitled "The GBBO", or the beginning won't make much sense (not that this has ever stopped me in the past)

Yes, The Glaswegian Beef-Boiling Organisation
 - what?  you expected something different?
     Today, before setting off for work, Conrad rashly challenged the world to Bring It On.
     World promptly took up the challenge of challenging, meaning I forgot my bus pass, then had to hunt it down and as a consequence missed the bus.
     Then it took half an hour to overcome the palsied narcolepsy that infested my works PC, a situation that it felt honour-bound to revisit several times during the day, usually whilst on the phone to a customer -
     Speaking of which, Conrad fielded 50 phone calls over the day, about twice the normal daily total, including some where the caller combined a touching 1960's naivete about computers with malfunctioning earpieces and unresolvable database problems.

It's in Glasgow and they boil beef.
What, you thought I was fibbing?

FOOD

And here an aside about edible - mostly - stuff.

Polo Smoothy

Conrad heard this phrase mentioned in passing, and - he probably had time to spare - wondered how to make one.  No!  Not with real Polos, much too hard and gritty, you might as well have a Silicon Dioxide Smoothy*.  Conrad made his with milk, yoghurt, banana and peppermint flavouring.

White as a polo shirt

     The verdict?  Perhaps a capful too much of the flavouring.  Once this month's pay arrives Conrad may consider making it with mint ice-cream instead, except that's usually coloured green.  O if only I knew someone arty who could advise which colour combined with green makes white ...

Lemon and Coconut Cake

As Suzi is leaving on Friday, Conrad not only has to compose a bit of doggerel rhyme for her, he is also obliged to bake a cake for her, in this case the above named, since she thinks it's the nicest cake ever made.

     If Conrad goes to the after-work do on Friday, then he has to do the weekly shop on Thursday instead of Friday, which means - between that and Pub Quiz - he won't have time to bake anything on Thursday, so I baked this cake yesterday -

Lemon Drizzle Cake

(Tee Hee!  I feel so deliciously wicked, copy-and-pasting from the above): As Suzi Kay is leaving on Friday, Conrad not only has to compose a bit of doggerel rhyme for her, he is also obliged to bake a cake for her, in this case the above named, since she thinks it's the nicest cake ever made.

     If Conrad goes to the after-work do on Friday, then he has to do the weekly shop on Thursday instead of Friday, which means - between that and Pub Quiz - he won't have time to bake anything on Thursday, so I baked this cake yesterday tonight -

"Jack Daniels Sauce"

Not entirely sure where I overheard this particular phrase, but it does make one pause and reconsider.  A sauce, at it's most basic, can be nothing more than fat and flour with milk added in, from which the dedicated chef can construct more complex recipes.  Conrad is curious about this one, but would probably only buy a miniature of JD to practice this with (despite his surname he is not over-fond of whisky)

Jack Daniel Source.  Close enough

The Runcible Spoon

It's not edible, but you - perhaps - can eat with it.

     Conrad can identify why this mysterious object came up for discussion - he was washing his spoon in the sink and caught sight of a rather more elaborate one.

     You may, or may not, have heard of Edward Lear, purveyor of nonsense verse to Victorians.  "The Owl and the Pussycat"?  "The Pobble Who Has No Toes"? "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones"**?  He invented the concept of a "runcible" spoon, but never defined what it was, exactly.  Or even vaguely.  Thus a whole tranche of illustrations and objects and images have evolved over time as to what a Runcible spoon may be.

A giant mobile one-tonne runcible spoon

Okay, aside over.  That wasn't too bad, was it?  

Revelations

As this is Conrad's blog, he is allowed to blow multiple trumpets in praise of himself and his works, even if you don't like it. Especially if you don't like it.  In fact, if you don't like it he will find out where you live and come to camp on your doorstep, with his flock of trained weasels, and lo! your life will take a turn for the worst.  Weasels, you see -

     Actually we're getting off the point.

If it's this point, I'm quite happy to be off it
(Conrad.  Hates all musicals)

     What was the point?  - Oh! - yes, I remember.  "Revelations", the zombie novel.  Now into the last chapter of Year Four, and already I'm thinking of amendments and additions to the earlier text.  Major Holmes, for example, has to have a visit to an old ex-Army chum now in practice in Harley Street, who tells in graphic detail how devastating Omega is going to be across the UK (subtly extrapolated to the whole world).  Dee himself needs more background; he is a horrid right-wing reactionary and this needs bringing to the fore, alongside more activity and contacts beyond the khaki wall of the Army.

     There.  How an author thinks.

Okay, I don't have time tonight to go into the Great British Bake Off, since it's already after ten and were I to continue it would be Thursday, at least.  Maybe tomorrow.

Finally

Notice no pun about "fin" here - what the well-dressed Antipodean is wearing this season - the Weasel Shark as fashion accessory, dahling ...

"Weasel shark Weasel shark.
Nice and quiet, does not bark"

* "Silicon Dioxide = Sand.

** I lied about this one.  It's a collection of short stories by JG Ballard, and an album by the greatest rock band ever to come out of Sheffield.