British Stele

What?  Don't Tell Me You Think I Mis-Spelled It?
As if!  You are talking about the biggest spelling boor in the Western Hemisphere, for the love of heaven, not to mention this web application has a spell-checker.
     I know what you were thinking of.  Art?

WRONG!

     Once again, we here at BOOJUM! (Conrad, Oscar, Art and Mister Hand) do not tamper with the Terrible Trio - Religion, Politics or Current Affairs.  No, it is pure coincidence that Conrad happens to mention what was described in the world of antiquity as a "Tablet or plaque, usually engraved and taller than it is wide" - a stele.  Here is the British stele in question:

The stele of Antiochus

     Apparently the Turks are making noises about wanting it.
     WELL THEY JOLLY WELL CAN'T!

"Inherent Vice" By Thomas Pynchon
As you surely know by now, your humble scribe is a big fan of the author, and has to still pinch himself every now and then.  They made a film of this?  Yes, really.  Did they really?  Yes really.  I'm not imagining it? Yes - look, I'm bruising from all this pinching.  Anyway, this is about the novel not the film.

The film poster, just to be perverse

     I did post on Facebook that it's a positive smorgasbord of pop culture references, so many that your humble scribe has taken to noting them down, because you can't exactly trust TP.  He's inventive and creative and some of those people could be fictional.  Scott Oof?  Probably made up.  Art Fleming?  No idea.  Ron Karenga?  Who knows!  Adam-12?
     Aha.  "Adam-12" was a televsion show about a couple of cops who patrolled the mean streets of San Francisco in their car, 1-Adam-12.  Thank you Wikipedia.
     Never seen it.
     Next!

"PURLOIN"
I can tell you're desperate to know where this word comes from, desperate.  Even if you're not, you're still going to find out - SIT BACK DOWN!  This is interesting, and even perhaps a bit topical*. 
     Okay, Conrad suspected a French root for the word, as it doesn't sound either Latin or Greek, the usual suspects.  It means "Steal" (tee hee!).  It does have Old French roots, "Pur" meaning "Forth" and "Loign", meaning "Far".  From this comes "Purloigner", meaning "To put away" - which is what the criminals in "Inherent Vice" are trying to do to Mickey Wolfmann - but I digress.  Thus we get "Purloin", meaning "To put at a distance", that is, steal.
     BOOJUM! - making education entertaining**.

No!  Art!

The Dirty Bomb
Currently in the news, Conrad has avoided being specific about these babies in the past up until now.
     "God Bless you for your sound moral compass, Conrad!" I can hear you cheer.  "Er - up until now?"
     Yes, since I happened to be watching BBC News and Gavin Esler and a visiting lady scientists were discussing the matter in depth.  I wish I could remember her name, she was a looker***.  Given the coverage this broadcast has, I think the self-censor here at BOOJUM! can be relaxed.
     Okay, a "Dirty bomb" is classed as a "Radiological Weapon".  Please note, as the hot positive role model lady scientist elaborated, it is NOT a nuclear weapon.  A nuclear weapon operates by the fission of radioactive materials.  A thermonuclear weapon operates by the fusion of radioactive materials and special isotopes.  A nuclear weapon is complicated to construct; a thermonuclear weapon is extremely complicated to construct.  Witness those baffoons the Norks trying: they've spent decades and billions to barely manage the former and completely futz the latter.

Rush hour in Pyongyang*

     A dirty bomb, however, is simply an explosive core with an outer cladding of radioactive material, and any radioactive material will do.  You can only contaminate an area with one of these, and the area covered depends wildly on weather, windspeed, elevation above ground level, surrounding terrain, the type of explosive used and how it's detonated - a whole range of imponderables.
     
Too grim!  Cheer us up!

Er - Herbie the skateboarding duck, anyone?

A man eating tree?

A man-eating tree?^

Okay, that'll do for tonight.


* I know I said no Current Affairs, but I lie a lot.
** Or weird.  Weird will do instead.
*** Er - lest you think me shallow, she was a positive advert for - er - women in science.
^  Gotta respect the hyphen

British Steel

The Metaphorical Kind

Oh, I'm sorry, were you expecting a long screed on the troubles of that particular industry here in the UK?  Then you haven't been paying attention, have you?  We here at BOOJUM! remain Safe For Work; the only time you ever see anything remotely rude is on a statue.  Nor do we cover that modern triumvirate of trigger subjects:  Politics, Religion and Current Affairs, so ta-ta to Tata.

     "Hang on, Conrad, weren't you supposed to be over in Sheffield in the quaintly-named village of Dungworth, playing in a wargaming event?  Crisis Point?"

     You have a point.  Yes, that's what I was supposed to do, except fate, engine revolutions per minute and sharp gradients all intervened.

     Okay, consider that to get to Sheffield your humble scribe needs to travel down the motorway and over the Snake Pass, named for being extremely sinuous and long.  Art?

Just like this

     Not more than a mile into the Glossop end, the car engine was racing at up to 40,000 RPM, we weren't moving at more than 25 miles per hour and this was on a relatively gentle incline.  Conrad killed the motor, got out and almost wept with technical terror, pausing briefly to beat out the flames rising thirty feet into the air*.

     AAAAGGGGHHHH!!!! BLOWN UP ON THE SNAKE PASS!!! I raved, which is when a bit of that steel in may backbone would have gone down well.  I mused that, if the car survived a three-point turn, I might be able to freewheel back into Glossop thanks to the gradient and inertia.  Bless the Murdermobile, it managed well under power and kept going on the flat, allowing your modest artisan to slink home to Royton.  By this time his spirits had recovered enough for his backbone to exhibit a touch of - well, steel would be over-stating it - aluminium, perhaps?

     Then he remembered this:

Known as <ahem> a butcher's steel.

     So, no Crisis Point V.  On the plus side, lots of anecdote for the blog, eh**?

The Snake Pass in winter, similar to the first time I drove over it

"Star Wars:  The Force Awakens"

You may have heard of this renaissance of the franchise, which I saw recently and enjoyed, too: a blast from start to finish.  Well-judged, well-paced and well done.  I took notes, so there may be a follow-up to this post.  Anyway, I knew John Boyega, who plays FN2187/Finn, was going on to bigger and better things after seeing him in "Attack The Block", because I had to keep reminding myself "No, Conrad!  he is not a criminal thieving chav!  That's acting!"

Young John.  Don't forget, I predicted success first.  Me.

     But I digress***.  I referred myself over to the IMDB Forum for SWTFA, just out of curiosity and My Goodness!  What a lot of haters, who don't like the film one little bit.  There was probably a thread about "How dare Rey be a girl" but I didn't hang around long enough to see if it was true.

     There was one thread gloating about how the critical rating was down to 8.3 (IMDB scores decimally up to 10.00), as if they'd confused 8.3 with 3.8.  Go look at the 2015 "Fantastic Four" if you want to see a critically roasted film; sorry, haters, 8.3 is a really high score.

     Then there's the box office.  This film cost an estimated $200 million to make, which is certainly a tidy chunk of change, although you can see it all up on  screen.  How much has it made back?  $2 billion.  Sorry, haters, also impressively high.

"That's outREYgous!"

I Shall Have To Find Another Creature Metaphor

Normally I use the patented BOOJUM! Coincidence Hydra to illustrate the latest event in the Universe trying to tell me something in a cryptic and curious manner, as the odd and unusual worries me^.  

     However, today we have an interesting and, dare I say it, pleasant coincidence.  Art?

Holy Trinity Parish Church

     I no longer bother to criticise the Foobs and the Twits as I feared it was getting boring.  This time I'd have to compliment them instead, as I do like organ music - WHICH IS NOT CREEPY! - and here is some.  Not only that, Shaw is next town over from Royton (where I live) and I've driven past this church many a time.

Coincidence Hydra:  Warm and Fuzzy model?

A Little In-Joke

Back to "Person Of Interest".  Reese, in his false identity as a police officer, has been told off by his captain about shooting people.  Of course, since John is a good guy, he only shoots them in the knee, to immobilise them.  Art?

No, no, without a gun.  He's a good guy.  Come on, Art!

Well - giving off a certain "Don't mess with me" vibe, but at least no gun.

     Reese tends to be laconic, and quietly-spoken, kinda like Poncho Guy in those Dollar westerns^^. He's shot four people in the knees that week.

     This is mirrored by Root, you know, the dangerously unstable sociopath^^^, who shoots four Latvian gangsters.  But only in the knees, as she too is on the side of good.

     Reese's captain wonders if there's any connection ...

The wages of sin: punctured patellae

*  A slight exaggeration.  Okay, complete fiction - for dramatic purposes only.

** The two don't balance out, just so we're clear.

*** Only a little, perhaps, still a bad habit

^  Unless it's me

^^ Ten Brownie points if you know what I mean.

^^^ Admit it, you like her already!

P.A.R.I.S.

Per April, Rob Is Sober
What, you were expecting a rhapsodical wax about the City of Light?  Actually, the real City of Light is Luxembourg, the capital of Luxembourg, which translates as "Light City" -
     - but I digress.
     "Who is this mysterious, no doubt sinister and rarely-mentioned "Rob", Conrad?" I hear you ask in tones of polite enquiry.  Nice attitude, keep it up.
     Well, it's me by my quotidian nomenclature*.  "P.A.C.I.S." simply won't do, you can't make a pun from that referring to one of the great European capital cities.  It sounds like a sub-committee of the San Francisco Transit Authority charged with budgeting for cash discounts on the subway -
     - but I digress. Again.

This is either a sackbut or a medieval hand-cannon

     I recall Liam at work querying why one would inflict voluntary sobriety upon oneself.  Well, Liam, in much the same way I destroy planets - because I can.  To prove a point, in addition to saving money and losing weight, though not at the pub - soft drinks by the pint cost more than beer <sad face>.  
     Nor is that all.  On Saturday and Sunday I'm driving to the village of Dungworth, in the countryside outside Sheffield.  It's a long drive: on the motorway, then over the Snake Pass and then negotiating a lot of narrow, winding country roads.  Not the sort of drive to be done if you're anything less than sober.  Besides, how else am I going to retain my boyish figure?

Either a hammer dulcimer or an extremely elaborate cheese-slicer

World War Two And The Crossword Clue
Conrad likes to flatter himself that he is, as the Naval And Military Press catalogue states, a "Serious student of conflict" and not, as some critics would have, a rather ghoulish war junkie.  This being so, he was rather put out by the Metro's Cryptic Crossword 1 Across: "Total disagreement, but not the first: 5,3,3".
     Which turned out to be "WORLD WAR TWO" - Art?

Those are Russians, incidentally, hauling PTRD anti-tank rifles

     Meaning I can legitimately re-use the screenshot from yesterday's blog.
     Conrad: like a bad bus - slow but gets there eventually.

"Person of Interest - Season 3"
Just finished watching this and hopefully, as it's two years old, I'm not breaking too many rules by posting a SPOILER.  SPOILER AHEAD.  GO NO FURTHER -oh you get the idea.


     I can reveal that Hersh, the human attack-dog, is dead, really really dead.  In fact they'll have to use DNA sampling kits to identify his remains.  He was trying to de-activate a gigantic bomb assembly, and might have managed it, too, if three of either Decima or Vigilance's goons hadn't shown up and shot him.  He killed all three of them, of course, but the delay and injuries meant the bomb detonated before he could stop it.
     This, Conrad feels, is a shame.  His bulldog pugnaciousness, and bulldog looks, added to his utter ruthlessness and brutality, made the deadly John Reese look like a friendly grandad.  Art?

"What?  They were Decima - they'd have gone out the window before they talked!"

     This is a grim little jest as set up by Reese and Finch.  Apparently if you are a Decima minion and get taken alive, nobody benefits.  If, on the other hand, you deliberately kill yourself to prevent capture, then your surviving family get a huge ex gratis payment.  So Hersh feels perfectly happy in executing (or murdering, depending on your perspective) a couple of Decima minions Reese had merely incapacitated.

I Shall Keep This Small -
 - as there are several rude words present, and BOOJUM! still keeps up the facade of being SFW.  Liable to make your brain jib a bit, perhaps, but still SFW.

Just vague enough -

     It's a spoof Glasto line-up, featuring amongst others "The King And Queen Of Norway", although it's not clear if this is a ceremonial attendance by their highnesses, a band or the Norwegian monarchs will be playing the sackbut and hammer dulcimer.  Plus, who could resist "Doreen Sprangle and her dancing jellyfish", or "The Bad Guy From Commando" - would that be the Australian chap who gets piped-out at the end?  And surely "The 1978 Scotland World Cup Squad" is far too clumsy a name for a band so it must be the real thing?  Love that Pingu will be there, though, the charming little Scandinavian oddity.  He might be playing alongside <ahem> Seal**.

Here We Have Quality***
Please note that, over the Easter period, Conrad has never descended to any of the painfully predictable Easter-themed puns that swarm into the cold light of day.  You see them all over - "cheep", "eggstra-" "shelling out", "myxamatosis", "hot dross buns" - which really cheapens the art of the wordsmith.  If we wordsmiths had a union I'd petition it to sue these idle letterers for millions.  Billions, even.  That's make them duck for cove - SORRY! - make them more creative.

Conrad, all festive and merry.
Yes, I know it's Christmas, not Easter, but you have to work with what you've got.

*  Day name <translation from smart alec to English courtesy Mister Hand>
** Sorry.
*** Perhaps