Toxophilic Trauma!

No!  In Fact - NO! - This Is Nothing To Do With Either Disease Or Poisons
Really, as if we'd comment on current affairs!  I know we do occasionally when there's the chance to score cheap traffic points, but now is not the time*.  
     Anyway, that title is from the Greek for "Archer", which comes from "Toxophily", in that "Toxon" means "Bow" and "Philos" means "Love of".  Is that clear?

About to rob somewhere!

     For yes, we are back with the Full Mag video of Richard Ryan and his explosive arrows, modelled after Mister. J. J. X. Rambo.  If you recall yesterday we covered the planning, creation and testing of these arrows, and now we move on to the actual shooting of same.
  Art?

Bang, and then some

      This is Rich's arrow hitting a melon in front of a breezeblock; the breezeblock is there so that the arrow hits something solid in order to detonate, as the melon is a bit too squishy for this.  As you can see, this is a fair old bang, which Richard was delighted with, as it was a practical demonstration that his theory and practice had been correct.  What you can't see is the arrow's shaft bouncing back on a return trajectory that nearly hit him; a consequence of ballistics and a robust shaft.  Art?

A fraction of a second later ...

     This is a slo-mo shot of what happened to the melon - disintegrated as you'd expect - and the breezeblock, which has also come apart, rather to my surprise.  
     So, the arrows work.  Next job is to do a test at distance, on a mannequin wearing a flak jacket with protective plate.  Art?

A palpable hit

     Once again, the metal insert in the flak jacket was there to ensure the arrow detonated, since the mannequin itself wasn't dense enough.  When Richard checked for damage, there wasn't much; that protective plate did it's job.  What he should have done was have some accelerometer patches on the mannequin, a la Mythbusters, because I bet that the kinetic energy transmitted by the arrow would cause serious injury or death in real life.  In the case of the Vile Vietnamese Villain in the original film that inspired these arrows, he wasn't wearing a flak jacket or any kind of protective garment, so the explosive arrow might not have detonated, in which case he'd have an enormous soft tissue wound that would have killed him through shock or blood loss alone.  Art?

     Or, if the arrow hit bone, that above would have happened, except on a smaller scale.
     BOOJUM! - being analytically gory so you don't have to!
     Motley, shall we experiment with this ballistics gel and a crossbow?     

Yesteryon's Haul
Colour Conrad surprised; some of the books I only ordered at the weekend arrived on Wednesday, which had me rubbing my hands with glee.  Art?

     From port: this is the fourth and final volume in Prit Buttar's quadrology about the Eastern Front in the First Unpleasantness, and I shall have to leave this one to read after I get the other three.  Number one is on it's way.  
     In the median position:  yes, another volume in my collection of the British Official Histories of the First Unpleasantness, this being the first in their series about Air Operations.  These don't come up for sale very often, so I jumped at the opportunity; thank you Turner Donovan Books!  It dates from 1922 and I shall be very careful about handling it, as fingers slathered with melted cheese or nacho cheese dip are Not Good For It.  From what I recall, the British Expeditionary Force went to France in 1914 with exactly 12 planes; by the Armistice in 1918 they had 1,200.
     And to starboard, we have yet another memoir of an officer in the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry, one Miles Hildyard.

These chaps

Myles, absent headgear.  Bad Myles!  Naughty Myles!  No cigar for Myles!

     I am still plodding through "An Englishman At War" (about 20% done) so may have to delay beginning this one.

Back To That Rolling Stone List
We are now down - or up - to Number 42 of the 50 best television sci-fi shows of all time: "Misfits".  Art?

The definitive version

     You might call this an anti-superhero series, as the titular characters above were all teenagers who had gotten into trouble with the law, and whom were doing Community Service in order to recompense; so they were not coming from a position of moral authority, selfless service to others or even being especially nice.  They managed to accidentally kill a lot of people, most of whom thoroughly deserved it, and the stand-out character was Nathan, seen above pointing (see?  I told you they were rude), played by Robert Sheehan.  Conrad mostly lost interest when he left, but the following seasons are worth watching.  Spot the Game of Thrones actor ...

Not quite devoid of redeeming features.

     It must have something going for it, if a South Canadian magazine thinks highly of it.

r/AskReddit Revenge Tales
O my, these are nothing but Schadenfreude in spoken form.  I do have one where the narrator was married, and his wife was having an affair with her Anthropology professor, which he found out by accident.  He kind of sat back and pondered on this affair for a couple of weeks before coming up with such an evil revenge scheme that one wonders what he does for a living normally.  Art?

Poison ivy, which grew in the narrator's back yard.  This is important.

     Now, this is where I have to skirt around things to remain SFW.  Our Narrator - henceforth ON - mentioned that he created a "weed lube", which is a lubricating agent used in <ahem> carnal relations and which smells of the marijuana it is made with.  One of the indications of the affair was that this lube was getting used up, when it was definitely not by he and his wife.

Cannabis Sativa, or "Weed"

     Very early one morning ON got up and substituted the anthropology prof's contact number for his own on his wife's phone, meaning that any message to or from her phone would appear to be from or to him.  The other substitution he did was to add in an extract of poison ivy to the "weed lube".

Poison ivy rash

      Here an aside for non-South Canadian readers.  Poison ivy is a harmless-looking plant that can cause severe allergic reactions if a person touches it, bringing them out in rashes or blisters, which are at least itchy and frequently painful.
     Cheating wifey then goes for a shower and texts her lover, complaining about severe itching; this message, of course, goes straight to ON, who blithely messages back saying that he'd had herpes, which seems to have flared up again.  Could she not tell anyone else, as he didn't want to get his chances of intimate carnal relations with a Teaching Assistant he had his eye on being spoiled?
     This causes Cheating (And Itching) Wifey to storm out of the house.  ON pauses just long enough to log onto her laptop -

A laptop.

     - and delete all her degree thesis on anthropology, all the notes and all the backups and pretty much everything to do with her degree.  He then follows CAIW to university, where he sees her in the classroom with the bemused and clueless anthropology prof, having a shrieking meltdown in front of a whole class of students.
     The prof got fired for inappropriate behaviour, ending up teaching at high school, which is a bit of a comedown for an academic like him.  ON posted that now-divorced CAIW never passed her degree and was now resigned to life as a (his words) "Perpetually Pregnant Housewife".  Probably not how she saw her life being.
     I suspect ON's day job is arranging CIA assassinations abroad; he was far too creative in getting his own back.

Look!  There he is!

Finally -
This will all make sense on Facebook, honest.

*  <polishes halo> 

Rambowman

Okay, Those Of You Not Interested In THINGS EXPLODING Can Look Away Now
I did warn you yesterday that we were going to be taking a look at one of the offshoots of Black Rifle Coffee Company, whom I'm not going to pretend are remotely PC, and who could care less about what some blog has to say about them.  Plus, they are all armed to the teeth, and further north of that; if you can be armed to the occiput, they are*.
     So, let us have a look at that landmark in quality entertainment, "Rambo First Blood: Part Two"**.  I may have accidentally seen this at the pictures in the year it came out, when I was searching for the screen that was playing the monochrome subtitled animated "A Le Recherche Du Temps Perdue", honestly.  Art?

     Here we see John getting ready to release an arrow, which has an explosive head.  Please note the size of this explosive head, as we will be coming back to this.  I shan't load a video sequence, but Ol' Ram holds his arrow at full extension for so long that his arm would have been wobbling in real life Hollywood.
     Next, let us see the sinister, evil, cowardly Vietnamese officer who could not hit a barn if he was stood inside it and it's dimensions were three yards square.  Art?

     This is the best I can do.  For obvious reasons they don't do a close up.  Anyway, you can see that the Vietnamese Villain's Vapourised.  He's not so much toast as he is pate.
     So, this is what our rep from Full Mag, Richard, attempts to emulate.  You may have already suspected that it is far harder to achieve in real life than in the movies, and you'd be right.  Art?

     "I was working in the lab, late one night -". Er - sorry about that.  This is Rich cooking up an explosive mixture that won't detonate once the kinetic energy of the bowstring hits the arrow, because said explosive will only be a couple of feet from his face, and like all of us he is very attached to his face, and wants to keep that relationship.  The other thing about an arrow-launched projectile is that it is going to be impact-detonated, i.e. the force of hitting a target will cause the explosive to go off.  This is considerably more hazardous than modern weapons which fire HE warheads, as these kinds of munitions do not arm until they are well clear of the user's weapon, usually arming by centripetal motion.  Art?

     An impressively tricked-out hunting bow, hmmm?  Also not how close the arrowhead is to Rich's face.  He's using this bow as the arrow travels exceedingly fast.  Art?

As measured by Malcolm

     380 feet per second.  This is good, as the higher the Velocity of Detonation, the better the chances of THINGS EXPLODING!!  Sorry for the two exclamation marks, I'm just a bit sweaty-palmed and excited.  Now, time for the actual explodey-arrow.  Art?

     There you go.  Note that this one is considerably larger than Rambo's, and no sniggering at the back there!
     Well, following my lead from Rambo, I think this article is Part One: The Theory, and we shall have Part Two: Blowing Shizzle Up tomorrow.
     Motley, shall we play a game?
      

A Bit Of Gloasting Is In Order
As you know, Conrad is not averse to either blowing his trumpet or ringing his bell, especially when he feels he's done something clever.  Hence some gloasting about my performance on the wordy section of my great big puzzle book.  Art?

     I'm not sure if you can follow this, so let me explicate - O hang on, let me just sweep and clear to make sure that odious traitor Mister Hand isn't lurking nearby -
     Good.  Okay, with these acrostics you work out the answer to the clues, eg. "Horn, bank or light (3)" = FOG, then look at the number below each letter and add that to the grid below - in this case "F" should be added to square 57 in the grid.
     The thing is, I recognised the quotation more or less straight away, one of those turgid expostulations by the Barf of Avon about "If music is the food of love -"
     Here an aside.  If Hawkwind were playing the food of love, I think you'd be suffering from <waitforitwaitforit> heavy metal poisoning***! This also works for Blue Oyster Cult and Black Sabbath.  Not Buck's Fizz; they'd simply make you sick.

<shudder>  The Eighties had some dreadful moments.

     Where were we?  O yes - a-polishing my halo of highly-intelligent.  I did the same with the previous acrostics quiz, which was that famous quote from Sherlock Holmes where you eliminate the impossible and then have to deal with land-mobile sharks with lasers on their heads the improbable.  I ought to be able to do well with wordy stuff, I've been reading them for over five decades.  Next!

A terrifying concept, even without laser beams.

You May Not Believe Me -
As if I'd tell anything but the unalloyed truth! <crosses fingers behind back>.  I do hesitate to post this picture, given that it's April Fools Day, and the Guardian is probably reprinting their story about the spoof island republic of San Serif - go look it up - but this is real and genuine, and I am still alive after eating same.  Art?

Sic

     That's a packet of Miso Soup mix, and some Mango Chutney.  I enjoyed the other Miso soup sachets with those croutons from 2014, and - you know what? - I'm still here.
     Food safety dates - a challenge not a warning!
     I wouldn't recommend any of you humans out there try this kind of dining, as you may die.

Finally -
Well, it appears one of the things I was anticipating with a rather sour disposition has not come to pass: to wit, nobody has posted an April Fool's story about "Miracle Cheap And Quick Coronavirus Cure!!"  Probably because they'd end up in jail, governments at the moment not being very tolerant of tail-twitching like this.  Just wait and see, though, because I bet some randomised anonymous source on social media puts it out.

"I have a total alibi, Conrad, whatever you're alleging."

*  Oooh!  Somone's been reading their dictionary!  <the barbed truth courtesy Mister Hand>
**  The Irony!  It irons!
***  I made this one up all by myself.  Can you tell?