Dangerous Dining!

Or, Eating As Usual For Conrad
If you have been reading this collection of nonsense for any length of time, you will know that your humble scribe has a stomach that can cope with everything short of nuclear fuel rods.  Active nuclear fuel rods, of course - spent ones no problem.  Francine, back at my old employer, said I needed to leave my body to science after I pass away, in order for them to unlock the unholy secrets of my internal organs.
     Well, reminiscing is fine and dandy, but there is a blog to complete so let us crack on.
     Here I am -

Me.  Just so we're clear.

     - and I am indeed drinking remaindered beer, eating remaindered sushi and eating a date-expired ciabatta roll filled with date-expired salami.

     I was thinking of leaving the sushi to mature for a day or two, until remembering I was hungry.

Excuse me, The Gun Battle in "Where Eagles Dare" has just started and it's a little hard to concentrate.  Oh - what a convenient link -

Where Eagles Dare And Conrad The Continuity Bore Is Still Hard At Work
I hope you understand and appreciate the sheer hard work and effort involved in picking holes in films, especially thick-ear thrillers that Conrad loves dearly and has already watched dozens of times.
     Anyway, whilst the incredibly complicated quintuple-cross scene is played out in Schloss Adler's impressive Gothic dining hall, our hero Richard asks the German colonel (played by the ever-excellent Anton Diffring) to ring the radio room and ask for a phone call to be put through, thus:

"It's called a telephone, Colonel.  Hideous twentieth-century technology, I admit, but it doesn't bite."

     The plot hole here is that the sinister Lieutenant Schaeffer (Clint) has already visited the radio room, and killed both people he found there.  That's Clint for you.  He meets you, he doesn't like you, five days later you're getting buried.

I shall leave this small as it's a bit bloodthirsty

     It's not until much later that we discover Schloss Adler has two radio rooms.  So - what if the Colonel had rung the wrong one?  Eh?
     Conrad: hair-splitting pedant for your education.

You WHAT?!
I know I have frequent recourse to invective when it comes to "Suggested Posts" on Facebook, as the Foobs really turn bumbling incompetent inappropriateness into an art form, yet today marked a new low.  Or perhaps high.  Definitely nothing in-between about it.
     Let me provide you with a little cultural background.  Back in the late Seventies an appalling film called "Grease" became immensely successful, proving that taste and discretion amongst you humans are horribly variable qualities.  Conrad, heavily into Prog, Punk and New Wave at the time, loathed it with a passion that burned brighter than the heart of the Sun.
     What do I see today?

17 things? 

     I would like to point out that I hate, HATE, HATE musicals.  This is a musical.  I have never seen it and never intend to - much like "The Sound of Music" or "Chicago".  At no point in my allotted span have I ever, ever, ever manifested a wish to see any of this film or it's songs.
     WHY, FACEBOOK, WHY!?

Doctor Who - The Zygon Inversion
Well well well, who's a clever Conrad then*?  I did point out that "The Zygon Invasion" last week was rather a blunt title, and - I was right, as you can't impress your audience with an Inversion unless you've had an Invasion first.
     I'm not going to critique the whole episode, as that would be time-consuming for me and pretty dull for you.  Salient points are:  Clara awakening to what seems to be a dream, or an interactive hallucination, and helping to save both The Doctor and Osgood.
     Who steals a van.  I wrote "there's a pun there" - Osbad?

Osgood.  Making geeks look rather winning (nice scarf!)

     As I predicted last week, Kate Stewart is not dead.  "This thing works two ways" comments a character, and it does indeed, as Kate manages to kill more Zygons on her own than the rest of UNIT put together.  She was pretending all along!

Kate Stewart.  Mixes a mean martini, cooks a superb souffle, raises prize-winning lobelias.
Also, kills bad guys.

     Now, the crux of the situationand the plot is that there are two "Osgood Boxes", each with two buttons that will either blow up the planet or supply people with endless cups of tea with milk and two sugars.  Sweet-and-low for those on a diet.  The Doctor and Osgood and Kate, and some Zygon rebels and the not-Clara** end up not pressing any buttons, at which The Doctor mutters " - just like the other fourteen times".

Osgood, Fox.  Close enough

     Doctor!  Really!  You arranged the ceasefire between the pizza-skins and humans and it's broken down FOURTEEN times?  What on earth is the body count thanks to your ineptness?  I should say <Mister Hand intervenes to prevent a ninety page rant>
     Also, a thing that made my flesh creep, Kate Stewart describes Harry Sullivan's Z-67 as "Zee Sixty Seven".  Excuse me?  EXCUSE ME?  That's "ZED Sixty Seven".

Conrad, spitting venom at this crass pandering to the South Canadian market!

     ZED ZED ZED!
     Or, ZZZ, meaning (as Zebedee would have it) - time for bed.


* Me.  Just so we're clear.
** Whom I spotted well before the reveal last week.

Sorry, You Honour, I Have No Idea

Perhaps It Seemed A Good Idea At The Time?
Conrad, if you were previously unaware of the fact, cannot confess to knowing exactly what is, or was, going on in his mind, especially when confronted with photographic evidence of same.
     For example:

     Here we see Conrad, wearing a tee shirt and pen, and also sporting a stylish bamboo skewer dangling from his mouth.  Why?  A good question.  Sorry, got no answer.
     Then we have him obviously trying to be clever -

I should cocoa -

     Here the witless one is apparently trying to make a visual pun involving Ripples and cocoa powder, except quite what the punchline is escapes me.  "Making Ripples" perhaps?  If so, try harder!

Where Eagles Dare - Conrad's Continuity Questions
I gave up on the WED Drinking Game as I wanted to be able to focus when Doctor Who came on, but - like the scapegrace I so obviously am - I've continued to watch it.  Now we come to the 49 minute mark, in the scenes where Clint and Richard are being taken away in a car, guarded by 4 beefy Germans -

Go on, count 'em!

     Clint gets rid of his escort by hurling him from the car; the driver is shot by Richard's escort who is, perhaps, a little too trigger-happy for the driver's health, and the officer is hurled to his death when the car crashes.

Clint lying low

     Nowhere, however, do we see what happens to Richard's escort.  He is not to be numbered amongst the living, so he's been done-in, but how and by whom is a mystery.  So, once again, Conrad has no idea.
     Then, when the car is being pushed down a handy ravine, it explodes.  There is no apparent reason given for this, except perhaps "It's in the script", and it's fortunate for our heroes that they didn't pause about getting rid of that car -
     No, Vulnavia, it does not "catch fire", it explodes in a massive fireball that means the funerals will be closed-casket:

The definition of an old banger

     Of course, I may be over-thinking this ...

And Whilst On The Subject
 - of having no idea, take a look at this:

     The Twits have excelled themselves here, if by "excelled" I mean "having got it so spectacularly wrong that they have actually sailed over the edge of the world and are now falling endlessly through space".  Conrad actively avoids playing computer games as they are i) Horribly addictive if well done and ii) Extremely time-consuming because of i).  That's the first thing.  The second is that Conrad has precisely 0% interest in football*.  Perhaps the cap on this post is that Conrad does not know what a football manager does, is not interested in finding out, and would likely lash out with murderous rage if forced to play a football manager computer game.

"Contumely"
How very apt that this word popped into my head whilst washing dishes.  It means "harsh or abusive language or behaviour" and is considered obsolete.  Not when there are Football Manager Computer Game to lambast it isn't!
     As with everything, it has Latin roots, the "Con" meaning "with" and "Tumere" meaning "To swell".  From there we move to "Contumelia" and then Old French "Contumelie" and finally Middle English and "Contumely", which is what Football Manager Computer Game Tweets deserve.

It's not better, it's worse!

What's In A Name?
Moving on from strident animosity, Conrad will divert and entertain you with more crude satire foisted upon the film industry.  Don't fret, they're big boys, they can take it.

BRUNT:"Don't underestimate a man who can take it on the nose"

BOOK LYN:"Available for weddings, bar mitzvahs and christenings"

KILL YOUR FIENDS: "He's having the very devil of a time!"

THE SUNNER: "Bringing light into everyone's lives."

     I admit the BRUNT one is a bit weak, it's just been very difficult to find a way to mock BURNT without being tasteless or NSFW**.

Quiver With Fear!
"Lift Rock For Idiots"*** gets one step closer to existence!  The Skreeming Voles were all fiction, LRFI threatens to become real.  Potential track title lifted from the television channel guide: Tower Vertical Rotisserie Grill.
     By the way, here's the very first set of lyrics I composed for the Voles:

Toxic to voles! Toxic to voles!

We're going to squash squirrels

And stamp on your moles - 

Toxic to voles! Toxic to voles!

     And at the bottom of the page came the claim: "This came out of my head all on it's own.  I'm just naturally gifted, aren't I?"
     Your views may vary.

A vole.  You'll have to imagine the screaming, sorry.

* His ignorance in these matters is always seen as hilarious at work.
** This is BOOJUM! not Frankie Boil, ta very much.
*** The band I keep threatening to create

We Return To Normality

No More Themes Today
That's as close to normal as I care to get.  Don't you worry, I've got three more Themed posts already partially-worked up and ready to go.  Mars and the letter "W", if you must know.  Quite how we started working-backwards-through-the-alphabet-from-Z is a bit of a mystery, however it takes a little of the heavy lifting out of being creative so I shall continue.  It'll be interesting when "Q" arrives as the only thing that springs immediately to mind is "Quetzalcoatl", that flying serpent of Meso-American folklore.  

Quetzalcoatl having a light snack.
A flying snake is probably high on some people's phobia lists

Oh, and "Quotidian", because Thomas Pynchon is always using it.  It means "Daily", as in the sense of "Conrad caught the quotidian bus into work, although it was late, slow and overcrowded", so it must have been a First Bus, which inspires me also to think of "Quibble", "Querulous" and "Quaker Oats".
     However!  Enough of the high-scoring Scrabble letters!  let the motley begin!

You What?
Ah, dearie me, the Twits are at it again.  Here is another of their asinine "Suggested Posts":

     Conrad is not sure who this Elle Golding is, although given her apparent musical ability to bare her chest at the world, he will lump her in with that talent-free arse-waggler whatsherface - Smiley Virus?  
     Actually what I wanted to quibble about in a querulous manner was Spotify.  I've not been on the site for years, when it would only let you play a song once, interrupted it with hideous aural adverts and limited your time to an hour a month.  By now it probably wants a pint of blood and your firstborn as a sacrifice.  <Insert very rude word here> off, Spotify!

A Never-Ending Source Of Entertainment
NO!  Not Spotify!  Do keep up - I mean the weather.
     I've yarked on about this many a time.  The weather here in the UK is fabulously and woefully unpredictable.  You can get four seasons in one day, five on occasion.  Since you readers are all utter skeptics, allow me to prove my point:

     Taken from the same chair in the kitchen.  In the first photo you can see the blue skies shortly to be illuminated by glorious sunshine, twenty minutes after a torrential storm where the rain blew along exactly as it does in films.  Then you have the weather as it has been the rest of the day - grim.  Querulous, even.
     Oh, and at this time of the season two years ago I walked into Royton in sandals and a tee-shirt as it was so warm and sunny***.

Twinkies Twice!
If you follow the blog with any regularity - which I recommend as it's the only thing that will save you when my starship invasion fleet gets here - then you know that Conrad has a sweet tooth.

Tee hee!  I used this photo already!

     Make that thirty two sweet teeth, as you can see in the breakfast above, which consists of ice cream.  One other weakness of Conrad is his fondness for Twinkies, which are rather more difficult to obtain here in the UK than in South Canada; they are part of American* pop culture after all, and feature as a plot point in "Zombieland".
     So today Conrad got his large, sausage-like fingers upon both regular Twinkies and NEW BANANA FLAVOUR TWINKIES**!

     I've already had a Banana Twinky and they pack the same delicious artificial flavour, except now with - hang on, Thomas Pynchon had a word for this beginning with "M" if I remember - "musa-something" - added banana.

A Rare Thing Indeed
Stephen, whom I work with, has the characteristic quick repartee and tongue of the classic Scouser wit.  He is never short of a caustic comment, put-down, wind-up, patently insincere compliment or camp gesture.  Given that he's also good enough at kick-boxing to run his own school, it's also unwise to take him on in close combat.
     Normally he is utterly without shame.  On Friday, however, I managed to make him fire-engine red about the face after reading out the pome he's been nagging me to write for him, which is a fine reward for forty minute's slaving over my notebook on the bus.

Whilst we’re on the subject of poems

I’ve been pestered by Mister Holmes

He wants one before he roams

Across international time-zones

This favouritism might seem unfair

About my colleague who festers there –

But he’s persistent and devil-may-care

So I’ve written this, so there.

I did argue this insistence is risible

A birthday’s not special ‘cos it’s divisible

By five, which made him miserable

Thus we end up with my scribbleable.

Speak well, colleagues, of this Scouser  rough

His feet of fury mean he’s one tough puff.

His tongue of tattle is sharp enough

And ceaselessly spouts Lisa-baiting guff

Stephen’s proud boast is “I don’t read books –

I don’t need knowledge, I’ve got the looks.

See me, at Christmas, wearing a tux.

And a kilt, and a sporran too, gadzooks.”

     Every word true!  He's 25, by the way, hence the crack about "divisible".



* Sorry, a typo:  "South Canadian" pop culture
** Note the banana-coloured font
*** Not just sandals and a tee-shirt.  Just so we're clear.

X X X

I Mean The Theme!
Which is around the letter "X", yes again, so put your tongues back in, you dirty-minded slavering rascals.  I know we've already had X as a theme, well there were more posts to post than time allowed last time, so we have a repeat performance before moving onwards - or should that be backwards? - to "W".  Yes, your humble scribe already has a theme on the next letter of the alphabet ready to go.
     Why?
     Why not!  Besides, whose blog is it?

This IS so to do with "X".
EXtreme ice-cream - three different types for breakfast!

X Ray
To the professionals who wear uniforms, get to carry guns and blow things up, this is code for "terrorist".  We shall instead be looking at the form of radiation.  
     X Rays come in two varieties, "soft" and "hard", ranging in wavelength from 10 nanometers to 0.1 nanometers, the shorter the wavelength the higher the energy and the harder the ray.  The higher wavelengths come after the ultraviolet spectrum of radiation, although don't expect them to give you a sexy beach tan as they're stopped by anything thicker than tissue-paper.

NO!  Art, I'm getting my Tazer -

     The lower, harder, wavelengths won't tan you, either, and are more likely to roast you like a chicken, actually.  These are the ones used in medical radiography and airport security scanners; doesn't it give you a  warm fuzzy feeling* to know that?  
     You might also care to know that, to a dark-adapted human eye, hard X rays are visible, as a faint blue-grey glow, except that this kind of knowledge risks the roast-chicken result.  So you'll just have to take my word for it.

Art redeems himself

X Men
I'll be brief on this as, thanks to film, everyone knows who these folks are.
     Who are they?  Mutants.  Who masquerade as perfectly normal human beings at Professor Charles Xavier's School For Gifted Children.  When first we meet them in comics, there are but four of them - Scott, Hank, Angel, Blobby and someone else I can't be bothered to look up.
     I bet their parents were well pleased: five pupils in the whole school means a wonderful teacher-student ratio.

See?  He really is blobby

Xylene
A handy dandy chemical compound first extracted from wood tar, now produced by the millions of tons the world over.  It is used in inks, rubbers and adhesives, as a cleaning agent and as a base solvent for other chemicals to be added to.  It removes the natural oils from skin, allowing other agents to get to work on it.
     It is also highly flammable, but not that poisonous.  
     Hmmm.  "Worthy but dull" is Conrad's judgement**.

I Googled "Xylene" and it was either this or a chemical diagram

X Box
A child's toy.

An ex-box.  Close enough

Or something.

X-Wing
Ah, now you're talking!  The cool fighter from Star Wars, as opposed to the clunky and unappealing Y-Wing, or the TIE Fighter, which looks like a liquorice ice-cream sandwich.

Wings: locked

          Now, the X-Wing deploys it's wings in the "X" configuration before going into action, which obviously - obviously! - makes one wonder about their deflection.  This is the point at which fire from the guns intersects.  With machine guns or cannon the deflection point is several hundred feet or yards*** ahead of the fighter, so with the particle beam/laser/generic blaster bolt of the X-Wing, is this figure going to be several miles ahead?
     I'll get back to you on this.

Wings: Unlocked.
Ready to dish out destruction!

X Ray Spex
NO! Not the spectacles that allow you to see through people's clothes!  Get your collective mind out of the gutter and remember that BOOJUM! whilst being vituperative^, excoriating^ and misanthropic^, is not salacious^^.

All clothing lined with lead

     I refer, of course - obviously! - to the punk band, who were a bit like the Roxy Music of the punk scene, in that they just arrived, blew people away and were completely different to anything else going on at the time.
     Here's a link to their classic "Oh Bondage Up Yours"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogypBUCb7DA

     My spidey-sense tells me that Poly (Singer and lyricist) was not entirely certain about the appeal of bondage.

Xerox
Photocopiers, computers, deadly dull stuff.  NEXT!

Why are office photocopiers so huge and heavy?
So you can't take them outside and do THIS to them.

Xanadu
This is taken from the poem "Kublai Khan" by Coleridge, which I haven't read and ain't going to - remember!  Conrad hates poetry! - and is Colie's version of "Shangdu", which was KK's summer home when he was on holiday from empire-building and enemy-killing.
     Also, the first to mention that dreadful film will be spitted like a roasting turkey ...

A wild boar shot dead by Hamburg police.  Honestly.
You couldn't make this up, could you?

     I know that's nothing to do with Kublai Khan or Changdu, but - whose blog is it?


* Actually this might be the x rays at work.  Get behind this lead shielding.
** At which Xylene runs sobbing from the room.
*** NO! No blithering metric measures, BOOJUM! is proud to use IMPERIAL ones. Ta.
^ Nasty
^^ Rude