Today's Big News!

No!  Nothing To Do With That Thing With The M83's
A Palatial election or somesuch, because that would be politics - sorry, Politics, and we don't do that here.  Although I do recall a thesis by a couple of French M83 authors who said that the real tactic of intent was to lose the election and become the party in opposition, because that way you can sit on the sidelines and carp endlessly, without actually having to do anything yourself.  I also believe that the President's security detail have standing instructions that, once they are asleep, they are not to be awoken for anything less than nuclear war.

A carp

     Whilst on the subject of making the biggest bangs imaginable, let me inform you that the M83s have their own independent nuclear arsenal, with ballistic missile submarines, stand-off missiles, and they used to have a set of silos at the aptly-named Plateau d'Albion (Albion being all, y'know, perfidious and all).   They have a lot of nukes, to put it plainly, and, since they have always been pretttty ruthless in warfare, it is not recommended to rattle their chain.

Freud would have loved this.  It's called "Le Terrible", by the way

So What Is The Big News?
That the genome of the plant used to make tea, Camellia Sinensis, has been decoded!
     Sorry if this does not rock your world as much as it does mine, it's just that tea is an important element to everyday life here in the Allotment.  

My cuppa, in prep

For example, at the beginning of the Second Unpleasantness, HM Government bought up all of India's tea production for the duration, just to make sure.  I'm not certain what the correct figure is for annual tea consumption here in the UK - hang on - Oh My! - 60 BILLION cups per year.

Nuff said

     So, to us here in the island Eden that is the Allotment, this is impressive news.  There is potential for this research to open the way to improvements in plant breeding, and if it means that Morrisons or Asda, preferably both, stock loose-leaf Darjeeling, then I'm all for it.
     Palatial election?  Pah!

A Taste Of Malta
You know, or ought to know by now, that Conrad has a streak of perversity in him that lies close to the surface.  Thus, when a soft drink native to Malta named "Kinnie" was described by the returning travellers as - well, I don't want to insult the George Cross Island, but Degsy said that drinking it was like putting a copper penny on your tongue and sucking it -  Art?

I kinnie think of a pun for this
(To be said in a Scottish accent)

     - I was rather disappointed to find they hadn't brought any back with them.  The drink describes itself as "bittersweet", and is flavoured with bitter oranges and a handful of herbs.  
     All is not lost, however.  It is exported to many other countries - okay, okay, a few - and the Allotment is amongst them, so - my time may yet come.

I Do A Clerihew
Once again walking the dog proves to be a time for quiet reflection and working out how to insult celebrities and famous people - providing their surname is reasonable to rhyme with.  William Shatner proved hard to roast, as did Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Winston Churchill

Was rarely ill.

Because he drank a lot of brandy,

Which killed off his germs, thus being handy.

     This might get me in trouble with MI5, but I can always plead that he was really half South Canadian.  I think he also did bricklaying for stress relief, which might be an inspiration for a future clerihew.

Lloyd George

Loved to gorge.

He thought that all food was fine,

Which enormously expanded his waistline.

     I suppose it's alright to traduce LG nowadays, under the assumption that this is History, not Politics.  For those not familiar with him, he was a big cheese in the First Unpleasantness, but had become a cipher by the Second; he had a very influential rhetorical style and could not be trusted to tell the truth, in print or the spoken word.

Right, off to put my ten-day-past-it's-sell-by-date quiche in the oven!  Back shortly ...

Ted Heath

Had awesome teeth.

He could thus eat tough pork chops

And fearlessly crunch aniseed drops.

     Another UK politician and ex-Prime Minister.  Art?

Known for his love of yachts

Conrad The Killer

It's All True
Just not in the way you're thinking.  I strongly suspect some of you consider me to be a flinty-hearted killer, with the emotional range of a whelk, and all the tender feeling of an engine-block.  Well, yes, all pretty accurate, but no, I haven't been slaying your fellow humans, or even the revenant hordes.  No.
     Instead, by omission, I have killed off a whole bunch of Wonder Wifey's flowers.  Art?

The body of evidence

     Apparently, if it doesn't rain, these things need watering on a daily basis.  Who knew!  Not me, obviously.  Now, if WW happens to be reading this, as there is every possibility of her doing so, then I am merely acknowledging the crime, not - er - celebrating it.  Acknowledging.
     Now that I've put that behind us, let's move on hastily.

Mind Bigger Than Stomach
Whilst scoping out the 'Reduced' shelves at the Co-Op in Royton, I came across the following.  Art?

     I was intrigued, and since it was half-price, I got it.  Now the question is, what to do with it?  It appears to be a spread made from caramelised biscuits, the sort of thing that you might create an infinite recursion with - by putting it on biscuits.  One supposes that spreading it on toast would also apply.  I may Google for serving suggestions, as there aren't any on the label.

A Pother Of Perversity
You know BOOJUM! or at least you ought to by now; we change subject at the drop of a hat, going from the Plimsoll Line to Sprong with consummate ease, because linear logic is boring.
     So, there I was on Youtube, and up came a link for "10 Films So Bad They Pulled Them From Cinemas".
     Oh boy.  Conrad rubbed his hands with undisguised glee, then made a list*.  

Hands being rubbed out of shot

     And here it is:  Mortdecai; Swept Away; Seeking Justice; Max Steel; Mister Magoo; Delgo; Jem and the Holograms; The Garbage Pail Kids Movie; Gigli; Blackhat.
     I don't intend to check on Swept Away, as Madonna is a raddled old hag with unattractive teeth, and JATH sounds like a veritable tweener suckathon musical, nor does TGPKM tweak my interest, but the others ...
     We shall see.

Able to act better than Madonna

"Chaos"
This was going to be the title of today's first post, until I got to thinking about the word itself, and where it came from.  Hey, when walking the dog my mind wanders**.
     'Greek, I bet. It sounds Greek,' I said to myself.  Mentally, although I may have muttered it to Edna as well.  
     So, one quick check later and yes, it does come from the Greek "Khaos", meaning "Enormous empty space" which meaning evolved into French and "Primordial matter"  and the concept of disorder.

Close enough.  And a Pink Floyd reference

     "Fine," I hear you say.  "Our lesson in foreign languages for today.  And this is relevant because?"
     Because of what follows.

The Erie Canal Soda Pop Festival 1972
I hadn't heard of this until last week, and everything about it confirms Conrad's wise decision never to attend a music festival.  This one might take the biscuit as the worst music festival ever.
     A bit of background.  The festival got banned from the original venue at the last minute, so the organisers came up with the worst possible location they could have chosen.  Art?

Bull Island

     Bull Island is actually part of Illinois, but could only be reached from the state of Indiana.  Indiana didn't  want anything to do with the festival, and the Illinois locals were too unprepared to take action, so there were only 3 police officers present.
     Then there was the number of attendees.  The organisers planned for 55,000 and were gobsmacked when about 300,000 turned up.  Enormous traffic jams resulted.  Food and water ran short, the sanitation facilites were overwhelmed and - surprise! - it rained heavily.

Bull Island washing facilities

     Apparently the only things not in short supply were illegal drugs, which had their own separate market area to trade from - only 3 policemen, remember? - and which did a roaring business.
     Amidst this enormous mass of drunk, stoned, thirsty, hungry and grubby people were agents for several of the supposed performers, who reported back on the shambolic event; thus a lot of performers, didn't.  
     The end of the festival saw remaining attendees - er - burn down the main stage.  This was after several vendor's vehicles had been - ah - robbed.  Then burnt.

The aftermath

     All in all, just about a textbook definition of "chaos".


*  Lists.  It's what I do.
**  Not much different from the rest of the time, really

There Is No Z In Manchester Airport

In Case Of Zombie
Yes, I know I was rather off-target with allegations of Rochdale being infested with the walking dead - although to judge by the number of hits that post got, a lot of people out there wish it had been - and there hadn't been any consequent risk to Oldham.  
     But what if there had been?  As you ought to know, a zombie infection spreads in an arithmetic progression as the number of infected increases.  This means that, from Patient Zero arriving in The Spindles, to the walking dead hammering on your front door, take as little as a couple of hours.

This could be YOU!
(I admit it's not very probable)

     Conrad then needed to find out how long it would take for a panic drive to Manchester Airport, and the answer was thirty minutes.  This presupposes that you have your Disaster Bag already packed, that you know where your passport is, and that you remember to turn off the hob.
     The transit time allows you to plan how to board an aircraft without a ticket; robbing another passenger is always an option, though you might try bribery, too.  I think my chosen method would be to run shrieking through the entrance hall - "SAVE YOURSELF THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE IS UPON US!!!" and follow the stampede to a departure gate.

I Googled, and this came up.  I am now officially worried.

Which Is Looking Ahead A Little
My Zombie Apocalypse MSS, "Revelations", never actually states what date the tale is set in, which I thought was frightfully clever.  You can make an educated guess at 2022, because the next Football World Cup is brought in, so my panic-timing drive was perhaps 5 years too early.  I also know who the guilty party is, and why, which I intend to keep a secret.

The Haul
I travelled to the airport on a dual-mission today - recovering Wonder Wifey being the cover story if MI5 or UNIT wanted to know where I was going at such breakneck speed*.   She returned from Malta bearing gifts, in appreciation at the care and attention I devoted to Edna, who thankfully cannot tell of the Wicked Neglect suffered at being displaced by a laptop.  Here you go:

     Those are various alcoholic liquers in the bottles, various decoctions involving figs or prickly pears, which sound interesting and may get sampled later tonight.  The 'Tondini' are curious little biscuits with a list of odd ingredients.  That small pile of pre-packed biscuits in the foreground has been acquired under the "Give It To Conrad" principle.  That is, if a foodstuff is tried and found to be ghastly, inedible, foul or near-rotten, it is given to Conrad, as he will eat anything**.
     I shall let you know.

That Coincidence Hydra - AGAIN
Last night Conrad was - er - conducting internet research - yeah, that was it, research - and he stumbled across a Youtube clip detailing "10 Tiny Mistakes That Caused Massive Disasters".  They do include the Castle Bravo thermonuclear test shot which I've mentioned before - the one where a supposed 5 megaton explosion ended up being 15 megatons instead - but the bit that made me sit back and use strong words  crops up at 5 minutes 25 seconds.  Here's the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFr2gQbgDAQ

     It details the story of Heinrich Albert, one of the top German spies in South Canada during the First Unpleasantness, who left his briefcase on a train.  A briefcase - Art?

A briefcase.  Just so we're clear

     - we have to be clear here, as all you youngwhippersnappers use mobile phones to carry information nowadays.  The unfortunate Heinrich's briefcase was simply stuffed with lots of juicy information about his spying activities, and it was promptly stolen by an agent of the US Secret Service.
     "That name seems familiar," I said to myself.  I can do this when at home, it's just unwise to do it on the bus.  It was indeed familiar, because who had I been reading about in "Code Breakers" - Art?

Breakers of codes

     None other than Heinrich Albert.  The Youtube presentation rather over-eggs the pudding, as the revelations leaked about all those documents didn't push South Canada into war, but Boy! did it annoy them.  Page 83 of the above edition, if you care to know.

Well, here we are at count again.  No worrying coincidences today, at least not so far - well, there was that episode of NCIS when McGee mentioned the TARDIS, to the puzzlement of Di Nozo ...



*  55 m.p.h. is breakneck, right?
**  Except pineapple and parsnips.