Noughts And Crosses And Podcast Bosses

More Travel Woes!
Also, if you're not interested in "Star Trek: The Next Generation" then move along, move along.  Although you are more to be pitied than scorned.
     "Get on with it, Conrad!  The joint is nearly ready!"
     <looks sternly at gentle readers>
     Your basting preparations aside, and meat had better be what you're referring to, I shall expound.
     This morning the 24 bus was late.  I am convinced that, in the Kerala dialect of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, "24 bus" translates as "the demon that travels on wheels", and you can't persuade me otherwise.

 - except for First it should read "Idle"

     A good 10 minutes late, which is odd as it can only have left the depot on a journey that takes 10 minutes.  Anyway, that's the nought part of the title explicated.  
     In fact I got a lift in to Manchester with Degsy, who kindly pulled the Murdermobile in as I stood at the bus stop in my lonely vigil.  Thus, no Metro - which is the Crosses part of the title, because no Cryptic crossword.
     The upside to this is listening to "Mission Log" and this morning it was the TNG episode "The Dauphin", which John and Ken both warned was definitely "a Wesley episode" with all the good and bad that entails.  Wesley fall hard for an apparently-human looking girl, Salia, the Dauphin of the title, who comes with a shape-shifting bodyguard, Anya.The course of true love does not run smooth, as it turns out - slight SPOILER ALERT here - that Salia is a shapeshifter, too.

Quite a shapely shifter ...

     I did make a few notes.  One was the comment John made about TNG being full of negotiations and mediations and parleys and treaties and - well, James Kirk would have felt right out of place.  Also, chocolate mousse is romantic; or at least it is to Wesley, who is - I think we can all admit this - rather a novice in the ways of wooing.  Then there was the incredibly convoluted and protracted plan that involved Salia being the Dauphin in the first place ("Dauphin" being French for "Dolphin" which is ironic as this is a form she doesn't shift into).

"It - it's behind me, isn't it?"

     Er - and then I'm afraid I rather went off at a tangent about "Allasomorphs", better known as shape-shifters, so we shall move on to a new post.

Shape-shifters And More Questions Than You Really Want To Know About
How does density work with shape-shifters?  Because their size in "The Dauphin" varies wildly.  If they grow large does that imply that they become a lot less dense, so whilst looking fierce and formidable, they're also fairy-light and one good punch would finish them off?  Or, if small in stature, then do they become dangerously dense, meaning punching them would fracture your phalanges (Or am I over-thinking this?).
     Do they have a default setting?  What happens when they go to sleep?  Are they right or left-handed?

"It - it's behind me, isn't it?"

     NB:  Warning note to readers: the alien life-form in "The Thing*" can be called a shape-shifter, except punching it, or indeed any kind of physical contact whatsoever, is right up there with the ideas classified as Very Bad Indeed.

Somebody ignored wise old Conrad ...

"Game Of Thrones"
Not sure what the episode was called, or if they have titles, so just to let you know we're talking about the most recent one, and this is the first time I've watched a full episode.
     Frankly I must have annoyed the bejoshua out of the rest of the family, viz:  "Who's that?  Who's he?  What are they doing?  Why?  Why not?  What's that?  I thought you needed a shipyard to build ships?  Where is this, again?  Why is he in an underground nest?  Wow, that girl is ugly.  <gratuitous nudity shot>  Who's he, again?  Why do they all have cataracts?  Where did that dog come from!  Who's he, again?
     Ah - Zombies!  Explosions! - this bit I understand.  Who's he, again**?"
     I do now at least realise that when Pete posted "Hold the door" on Facebook it was nothing to do with football.

"It - it's behind me, isn't it?"

The Cryptic Crossword
Polished off in 24 minutes, as you can see from the start and finish times so noted.  Art?

Conrad triumphant yet also modest.
But mostly triumphant

     Now, I know you're going to bang on about how there was no crossword this morning, so can - what's that?
     "Ah!  But you might have only just finished it at lunchtime, Conrad, and then retrospectively added in the times."
     I think your querulous quibbling is a bit -
     "That's not all, either!  How do we know those answers are legitimate and you haven't simply filled in spaces randomly!"
     Frankly, I think this says a lot more about you than you realise.  If you want me I shall be over there, on my Moral High Chair.




*  The original.  That goes without saying.
** Only joking with that last

The Consolation Of Dog And Pasta

NO!
Not together in a bowl; Jeez Louise, the very thought would have Wonder Wifey reaching for a kitchen knife and Anna trawling the dark web for assassins.
     Okay, let me backtrack a little.  The 24 bus didn't turn up again - one can only wonder at the childish hopefulness that pervades your humble scribe's heart as regards First Bus turning up - so I got home a good 24 minutes late*.  The first thing to greet me, whimpering madly, was Edna, tail wagging so hard her bum threatened to unscrew.  This always puts your modest artisan in a better mood: given his flinty-hearted character it's a bit of a stretch for him to understand that somebody pines for him.

Art, you baffoon!  That's an oak - O I give up

     There you go.  The "Dog" part of consolation explained.
     The pasta dish was one made by Wonder Wifey earlier, enough being left over for your talented typist to have a heaping bowlful of it, and jolly tasty it was too.  Salmon, onion and mushroom.  As I gratefully scoffed it, I gave honest thanks and that's the pasta part of the consolation explained.
     Now that the Intro is out of the way, let the motley begin!

"The Trollenberg Terror"
Ta, Oscar.  Once again, NO idea why this popped up in my head.  But it did.  So here we are.  It's a black and white horror film from 1958, itself an adaptation of a television series from 1957, and because of the age of this article no episodes are known to survive.  Probably very few viewers, either!
     IMDB calls it "The Crawling Eye" but then they only rate it at 4.8 so what do they know.  Seriously, it rates at least a 6.0.

This is exaggerating, to be honest

     It concerns an alien invasion (of sorts) that is foiled by telepathic sisters, an American leading man, and jet bombers.  Gotta respect that heavy metal.

Tentacular terror tackled by Tucker!
(Forrest Tucker, that American leading man I mentioned)

     It is also one of the first films that your humble scribe recorded from television onto a Video Cassette Recorder, which was rather a dark art at the time, and I missed the ending off.  So for all I knew the aliens won.

Proof they didn't

"Vircator"
Or, Virtual Cathode Oscillator.  An Electro Magnetic Pulse bomb, in other words.  As described by Thomas Pynchon in "Bleeding Edge".  Conrad is still not convinced it's a real thing, despite there being a ton of pictures on teh interwebz, which might derive from TP himself, for the chap is a cunning creator of convincing fiction, or perhaps he only picked up on the conspiranoids, as he also likes a conspiracy theory.
     Plus, why on Earth is it called "Virtual" when it's so clearly PHYSICAL?

Hmmm.  It looks convincing ...

Wordblind
Funny how the brain's wired, eh?  For some reason Conrad always reads "LGBT" as the acronym for the Boilermakers union (the GMBU); there's doubtless a bad-taste joke hiding there but I leave it for you to discover.  
     As with vans whose livery announces that they are "shopfitters" - your humble scribe always reads this first glance as "shoplifters".  Which is possibly a comment on his honesty**.
     After writing this out on the bus, which particular union did I come across this afternoon, asking for dues to no longer be paid?  Yes, the LGT - the GMBU.  This can stand for today's coincidence.

Jim'll Paint It
Proof, lest it be doubted, that there are some very peculiar people out there, and then some.  "Jim'll Paint It" is a website run by Jim, who will - you probably got here ahead of me, didn't you? - paint a picture of anything you request.  Anything.

This is "Modzilla Versus Gothra"

     People see "anything" as an excuse to be extremely silly and/or bizarre.  I shan't condemn Jim for having entirely too much time on his hands, as this is only a side-project and he sells art to keep body and soul together.  I shan't post a link as this way I can pad the blog out with pictures for weeks and weeks, har har***!
     Now, ID all the "Twin Peaks" characters on this tee-shirt -

And no Googling!

And we're now at count or close enough, because it's late and the old man is tired.
Me!  I'm the old man - oh time for bed.


*  Actually 25 but I'm being ironic and poetic here, so.
**  Or lack of it.  You choose.
** Maybe only a week.  It depends on my attent