Shades Of AC/DC

The Rockers From Oz

Not the description of how electric current behaves itself.  Electricity being Modern Magic, really.  Go on, explain how the cavity magnetron works, in detail, WITHOUT Googling for it.  You can't, can you?  CONRAD WINS AGAIN.

     Okay, let us now abruptly change track and divert to one of those photos that Conrad was banging on about yesteryon.  Art!

     No, I have no idea either.  Why a ferret or an owl must be down to a really devious marketing strategy that appeals to Athenians and Oldhamers.  Or something.  What I would like to direct your attention to is the name for this beer: "Dirty Deeds", because what was AC/DC's third album way back in the Seventies?  Art!

     I think I even heard it being played by Fluff on a Saturday afternoon once, because Conrad is not a fan of the band, possesses none of their material and does not seek them out.  However, it's a memorable album cover and one that stuck in my mind.

     Here an aside. The band were always more into alcohol than more exotic drugs, and Conrad seems to recall that Bon Scott, the original vocalist, had a tradition that, when they started to record a new album, he would order in 250,000 cigarettes.  Presumably to make cigarette bonfires so that he could inhale the fumes*?

    

     ANYWAY the beer is definitely not cheap, as it retails at £1.85 per can, and as you can see (cat food bowl for scale) it's not a very large can, either.  I will let you know what it tastes like when consumed, don't you worry.

      Motley!  Grab these terminals, one in each hand.  I'm going to run AC through one and DC through the other, and lucky you gets to explain how they feel.

Yes, very probably like this.

I Finally Got A Decent Picture Of Sergei!

For those late to the party, Your Humble Scribe mentioned a while ago <code for 'I can't remember when and can't be bothered to look' - the hideous truth courtesy Mister Hand!> that Sergei Sputnikoff, who runs the Youtube channel 'Ushanka Show', had a very strong resemblance to the computer game character Duke Nukem.  Of course - obviously! - when making that assertion I could not find any relevant pictures of Sergei.  Then, a couple of days ago I finally got one, hooray!

Duke Nukem

     

Sergei

     Of course, if I now look for pictures of Sergei on teh interwebz, they fall over themselves in looking to come to my attention.  Art!

     See?  It's not just me, other people have made the connection as well.  Er - at this point Conrad has to admit he has NO idea who or what Duke Nukem is or was, apart from a computer game. First Person Shooter? Role Playing Game? Real Time Strategy?  Take your pick.  Art!

Sergei's first bewildered steps in South Canada

     His channel is both entertaining and educational, go check it out.  Conrad especially enjoyed his low-key destruction of a Western marxist who bewailed the passing of the Soviet Union and how wonderful it was and how badly-off the surviving citizens were now that it was gone; "Hey I survived" replied Sergei, modestly pointing out that he lived there when these events happened.

Super Slavic Sergei

Closure In Moscow

No, nothing to do with Sergei - he's from Ukraine, not Russia, the two are as different as chalk and calcium carbonate.  This is actually the name of a band, who came up on a strange Youtube channel that seemed to think Your Humble Scribe needed a musical recommendation.  "5 Bands Similar To The Mars Volta" was the title of it and these were Number Two on the list.  Art!

"Pink Lemonade"

     Of course Conrad can no longer drink lemonade thanks to diabetes <spits> so this merely reminds me of that fact I HATES YOU CLOSURE IN MOSCOW I HATES YOU FOREVER**.

     And yes, that was a sneaky "Lord Of The Rings" reference there.

Ah, The Ballfoot Game

Once again, Your Humble Scribe has to state that he has precious little idea of what happens on the football pitch - twenty-two grown men kick an inflated pigs-bladder around for ninety minutes - yet there are people out there who believe - excuse me - Believe - with levels of religious fervour about their particular ballfoot team.

     One thing I have learned. You absolutely CANNOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES WHATSOEVER INCLUDING IMMINENT DESTRUCTION OF PLANET EARTH AND THE DESTRUCTION OF HOMO SAPIENS change the team you support.  Just an absolute "No" on that one.  

     "How is this relevant, O Aged Snowy-Haired Scribe?" I hear you ask.  Also "Baywatch Nights" is on soon, so get on with it."

Liverpool the city

    Stop me if I get too technical.  Okay, Liverpool won the - er - <thinks> - 'Premium Leaguer' last year, which meant they were Top Dog at the end of the 'season' (sorry for this technical jargon) at the Number One position.  This year they are currently languishing at Number Seven, too far behind the leaders to ever catch up. This, of course, has meant an avalanche of abuse on the BBC's Have Your Say commentary site, because apparently the Liverpool fans were boastful and arrogant last year as supporting the 'Premium Lager' winning team.  Here is a typical post.  Art!

    Who knew that 'smug' had a significant calorie and roughage content!  Conrad will probably wait to explain why this team was called "LiVARpool"  by non-fans endlessly, because your brains can only take in so much complicated technical information.

Finally - 

Conrad has finally finished annotating "Field Guns In France", which took an awful lot longer than imagined, with 43 single sides of A4 covered in Conrad's trademark spiderscrawl.  And at no point are the terms "Rake" or "Reach" mentioned, which is why I began it.  There was a query on The Great War Forum, you see, and - well, the deed is done.  It ends on a sad anti-climax, where the letter-writer is essentially invalided home thanks to his repeated exposure to gas.  One has to also note his utter unscrupulousness (as a senior officer, to boot!) in stealing supplies to better the circumstance of both his men and horses.

Such as Army-issue rum
("Service Rum Diluted" or "Seldom Reaches Destination")

*  CAUTION! Do not try at home.  Unless you want lungs like kippers.

**  "Forever" may be interpreted poetically.  Or not.  It depends how I feel.  Plus, I hate and detest poetry.

I Post A Host

 No, Not In The Sense Of An M.C.

In the sense of 'a lot'.  By which I mean photographs, because there have been some visual opportunities of late that Conrad took advantage of.  And now, a click-baity picture, because I'm horrid that way.  Art!

     First of all, however, we are going to detour via "Field Of Fire" by Jack Swaab, which I've just finished reading.  Not for everyone, because one reader on Goodreads found it repetitive and boring and gave up after 50 pages.  True, it's not all 'blazing combat action' or 'my wartime hell', and Jack spends a lot of time making value judgements on other members of his regiment, besides grumbling at the lack of promotion opportunities, interspersed with outbursts of action.  This is typical of wartime, in fact; long periods of boredom interrupted by short bouts of sheer terror.  Art!

     I've already mentioned Jack's incessant letter-writing, from an era before mobile phones and the internet.  He writes dozens and dozens to his paramour  "P" from North Africa and Sicily during 1942 and 1943.  When he returns to the diary in 1944, about to embark on D-Day, she is never mentioned again.  Clearly something happened - or didn't happen - but, being a gentleman, he never explains.  Art!

     Conrad very carefully took this picture last night, because - er - actually I forget why.  Maybe it had to do with Jack and artillery?  It's from "A Bridge Too Far" and it looks like genuine artillery explosions because that's exactly what they are.  So, it's set during September 1944, which is roughly when the "VT" (for "Variable Timing") proximity fuse started being used by the Allies on the battlefield.  Prior to this it was deemed too risky, as the crafty Teuton might recover undetonated shells and reverse engineer the fuse.  Jack mentions this in his diary, but also with the caveat that it would take at least a year to make any such copy.

Complicated, you see

     The reason these things were used on the battlefield was because they would explode consistently at a pre-determined height, rather than the gunners having to set a time fuse, or have it dig into the ground before detonating.  The unfortunate Teutons discovered just how effective this was when the South Canadians began doing it, followed by Perfidious Albion when the factories in South Canada began cranking them out by the tens of thousands.

The Joys Of Noise

Art!

     Forgive me if I venture too closely into "What I had for lunch today" territory, for Lo! Conrad is known to be a bit of a music bore.  The thing is, my laptop's speakers are pretty tinny; the external speakers will make next door's small child cry, and my earphones are pretty ropey after having been stood upon.

     So, headphones are the answer.  Except I thought they were broken, and had merely been too lazy to bin them.  Aha, it turns out they need AAA batteries to function, and the ones already inserted had died a blotchy death many years ago.  Replaced, the headphones work BRILLIANTLY.  Except for the fact that I am then totally unaware of the outside world.  This may put me at risk when the Zombie Apocalypse occurs*.

"NOW! while he's listening to The Mars Volta"

Despite What You May Read, Sharks Are STILL Our Friends

Conrad continues to plough his lonely furrow in defence of the shark, fear of whom appears universal in Hom. Sap., yes even in Switzerland and the Czech Republic**.

     Okay, let us bring on another photograph.  Art!

     There you go, your daily dose of bioluminescence (another word you never expected to see today).  This photo comes from the staid and respectable BBC News website, so it is couched in moderate and reasonable language.  One shudders to think what "The Sun" or "National Enquirer" would put up as a photographic by-line.  Art!

     Or the "Sunday Sport" <shudders in awe and horror>.

Speaking Of Being Silly With The Language ...

As every fule no, Conrad is always sizing up the beer aisles when he goes to do the weekly shop, not because of an incipient desire for alcohol (we will assume that as a given) but to see, instead, if he can use any of the branded bottles or cans as a visual pun.  There was that bottle of beer from a couple of weeks ago -

Not bad, actually

     I think any pun here would involve "The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald", an epic song about a ship being wrecked on the Great Lakes, from the mid-70s, by - 

     Yeah, baby, yeah!  Conrad suggests you give the song a listen, though he himself hasn't heard it in 45 years.  Paul Gambaccini jokingly described it's success as being young people more interested in shipwrecks than surfing.

Flashing

First of all, WASH OUT YOUR DIRTY MINDS! because I know what you're like.  Done it?  Good.  Remember, BOOJUM! is SFW, if a little incoherent at times.

     ANYWAY when the weather starts to get warmer, the days get longer, and the ceaseless torrent from the heavens pauses for a couple of days at a time, Wonder Wifey allows her green fingers scope in the back yard.  Thus we have acquired a set of garden lights.  Art!

     I know, I know, too much "What I had for lunch today".  Note the cool interleaved pattern they make.  That's without flash.  Next, with.  Art!

     Before you start clucking like a plucked chicken, pause for a moment about just how easy it was to put up a photograph taken with a flash.  Back in the days when cameras used film you would need a special one-off flash bulb, and you'd need to take the film to be developed, unless you had your own dark room.  Then you'd have to wait a couple of decades so the internet could be invented. 

Finally -

Tomorrow I shall be working <shakes fist at work> which means you only get one new post, so weep your tears now, gentle readers.  Conrad wonders what his response would be if work were to say "You can have a guaranteed job forever, but it means working EVERY Saturday, doing nothing but adding interview times (a mind-drainingly dull occupation)". I might feel obliged to take it, since this World Domination gig is rather pricey.

     And with that, Vulnavia, we are done!

*  They may be upon The Mansion before we can fill the Lava Moat.

**  Slovakia an unknown quantity here

"Excuse Me, Earth," Said Mars. "I Want A Word"

For Lo!

We are well beyond the fictional exploits of Mark Watney as described in "The Martian" and are back on Mars, following the Perseverance rover, which is real life for those of you who have only just joined us.  Once again, for those who think the rover appeared over the Jerzero Crater because Harry Potter, getting it there took a complicated assemblage of separate components.  Art!

ART!

    I'll come back to him later <plugs in dinosaur-rated Tazer>.  AS I WAS SAYING 

      This is the best example I can find that shows how the rover fits inside a pair of shells.  The bottom one is the heat shield, intended to protect everything above it from being roasted, casseroled and baked into charcoal during the desperately hot descent, despite Mars' atmosphere being about 1% of Earth's. The upper section is the back shell, to which the parachutes are attached, allowing it to slow the descent from Ridiculously Fast to merely Very Fast.  Once this is discarded, at a very low level, the descent lander takes over, using it's braking rockets to retard the speed to metres per second, and lowering Perseverance.  Once the rover touches down, the descent stage jets off into the distance.   Art - redeem yourself!

                    

     "Okay," I can hear your mutter mutinously.  "So what?"

     Have you been following my words?  Or - don't tell me, that "Dragging Race" program is on again*, and your attention is diverted.  Because of the following, gentle reader.  Art - partially-redeemed Art!

   One would exclaim "What on Earth?" except we have to adapt it to <winces in apology> "What on Mars?".

     LITTER!  RUBBISH!  POLLUTION!  

     Look at it, muck and filth everywhere Mister Warwick** across the pristine Martian landscape, thanks to careless tourists from Earth.  Who, I ask you, is going to clean up all that detritus?  Don't blame me if there are microbial colonies on that abandoned equipment that evolve over time into hideous mutant monsters who decide to take a belated revenge on the blue planet.

Revenge of the Martian bin-men?

     Motley!  We need to provide a bulleted article, about that film where a scientist gets his head and arm replaced by those of a bluebottle, and we'll call it <thinks> "Fly-Tipping".

O Irony, Thy Teeth Are Sharp

Possibly as sharp as those of the Coincidence Hydra, for if you have made it this far, then you have most certainly read today's Intro above.  Rubbish and littering the general theme, and that Picture Of Pollution is from the BBC's website, that fount of all that's fit to print.  Art!

Lower centre

     If you cannot read the tagline, present on the BBC's news website once again, it states "The LitterCam that's watching you" and of course the ironic juxtaposition (a word we like a lot here at BOOJUM!) does have a certain piquancy.  

     FOOLISH HUMANS!

     The article mentions that the CCTV cameras will track littering, obtain the licence-plate of the guilty vehicle and automatically issue a £90 fine.

    THIS IS HOW YOU GET SKYNET!

   Literally the thin end of the wedge.  You have been warned.

<gleeful machine noises>

     On a completely separate note, Your Humble Scribe is listening to "Nocturniquet" by The Mars Volta, which he's not played for ages, and is once again impressed by the Bonkers Latino Mathcore Prog-Metal stylings of this band, who might yet reform***.  But, probably not whilst we're all looking at them, because they're shy, so - everyone look away now!

Conrad Is A Terrible Person: Part One

We have, of late, been following the ratings of The CW's "Batwoman" series, because schadenfreude.  From what Your Humble Scribe has seen by way of reviews, it is Beyond Terrible.  The writers - well, back in the day one doubts they would have been able to tell one end of a fountain-pen from the other - are one of the problems.  Another is the sheer shoddiness of any CW production, since cheap-assness is an important part of their business strategy.  Yet a third is the Twitter community, which shouts loudly in support of the show and which doesn't bother to actually watch it.  How do we know this, Vulnavia?  I'm so glad you asked!

     Viewing Figures, Adjusted, is how.  The show goes out in South Canada on a Sunday - on three channels for free - and has a set of what we might call 'raw data' released shortly afterwards.  This is superceded later in the week by adjusted, more accurate figures.  Which, for Episode Six, are down to 456,000, meaning another 40,000 viewers baled on the show.  There are still 7 episodes to go, so Conrad's guesstimate of it falling to 250,000 by that time might actually hold true.  Since the South Canadian's favourite pastime is making money, and this show is patently not doing so, one wonders what is really going on behind the scenes.

Coughcoughtaxsamcoughcough

Conrad Is A Terrible Person: Part 2

ANNA DO NOT READ THIS!  Okay, covered myself there.

Conrad has been reading about the 'Proximity Fuse' only this afternoon, because it came out of a mention in "Field Of Fire", the diary memoir by Jack Swaab.  He had been sent on a lecture in late 1944 to be educated about the "VT" fuse, which stands for "Variable Timing".  Art!

     These puppies put artillery fire into the science-fiction future of 1970 from the dour present of 1940.  The idea was that they broadcast a radio signal, and when they neared a target, that signal's reflection got stronger, which triggered the fuse.  The shell it was attached to then went BANG and all sorts of unpleasant things happened.

    The thing is, the British Anti-Aircraft Command of late Second Unpleasantness deployed acres of guns along the south coast of This Sceptred Isle, in order to shoot down those pesky Teuton 'robot bombs' the V1.  Art?

V1.  Bomb.  Metal and plastic.

     The idea was that VT fuses would enormously increase the efficiency of anti-aircraft guns when dealing with the V1, and they were correct.  Using a VT fuse meant a fivefold increase in effectiveness.

     But ... they were using these weapons and ammunition on This Sceptred Isle's south coast.  "Coast".  Where there are seagulls.  Lots of seagulls.  At times, a flock of seagulls.  And an artillery shell with a HYPERSENSITIVE FUSE.  You can probably draw a picture, there were seagull casualties of the counter-V1 aerial barrage.

Seagull.  Bird.  Blood and feathers.

    And with that, Young Vulnavia, we - O, sorry, and your mother, who is up from Hampton Parva visiting for the weekend? - we are done.  

*  How can tractors be so fascinating?

**  Sorry.  "The Battle Of Britain" kind of interfered.

***  All hideous appendages crossed.

Hairs Split Into 157 Parts On Request

As You Should Surely Know

IF you were diligently reading the blog last night, then you know Conrad ended with a tangential reference to a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "Kubla Kahn", and I'd like to begin today's post with a couplet from same.  

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

   Down to a sunless sea.

     I know, I know, Your Humble Scribe normally loathes poetry, it being the literal equivalent of a parsnip and pineapple pizza <gags>.  I like to keep you guessing, however, and one thing you cannot deny is how capricious I am.

     Now, before the applied pedantry begins, Conrad distinctly remembers reading a novel called "Down To A Sunless Sea" back in the Eighties, whose author I cannot remember.  Allow me a little quick Google-fu -  aha.  Art!

     So now we know.  I wouldn't hurry out to get a copy from Abebooks, it's a very depressing read and everybody dies at the end, although nearly everybody dies at the beginning.  Now we know where the title comes from, Vulnavia.  Incidentally, there were rumours of a film 6 years ago, which has come to naught.

     And now another aside.  "Xanadu".  Conrad seems to recall Rush having a song like this, with lyrics stolen borrowed from Coleridge.  Hang on a moment -

To stand within the pleasure dome

Decreed by Kubla Khan

To taste anew the fruits of life

The last immortal man

To find the sacred river Alph

     Okay, they didn't just lift them whole.  That would have been bad.  Naughty Rush!  Art?

     Hmmm, this is the album cover that the song ("Xanadu") comes from.  Looks pretty post-apocalyptic to me.  Shades of DTASS, methinks.

     Okay, Rush score fairly high on the Rock Coolness Index Scale.  The same cannot be said of Olivia Newton-John, star of that legendarily awful film "Xanadu", which I dare not describe lest you think me off my head on drugs.  O go on then; she plays one of the Muses who inspires a struggling artist and a construction company owner to open a roller-skating musical rink.  Well, put in my understated style that looks almost believable.  It tanked at the box office - hardly surprising, I could have predicted that - yet the soundtrack album became an international success, going double-platinum.  Proof that Hom. Sap. are indeed a strange and unpredictable species.  Art!

     Also featuring The Tubes, whose "White Punks On Dope" is more properly representative of their oeuvre.

     Where were we?  O yes - that couplet.  Conrad is no architect yet he has a basic knowledge of physics and construction, and has to seriously question the wisdom of Ol' Kubby, since design, technology and materials science at his time (thirteenth century, timekeepers) were not up to the task of creating a large free-standing dome.  Art!

It HAS a dome.  It is NOT "A Dome".

     You know Conrad: achingly precise in his definitions, and he expects other people to be equally strict.  Now, take that line about Alph running "through caverns measureless to man", which you'd never get away with nowadays and besides women tend to be smaller and slimmer than men, meaning they can more easily explore narrow underground passages.  One then has to ask how they know these caverns are "measureless".  After all, being an underground cavern-measurer must be an awful job; cold, dark, damp and with the eerie suspicion that something is creeping ever-closer in the darkness ...

BOO!

     The temptation must be to pack it in after a few horrid weeks exploring: "O we'll just tell Ol' Kubby they go on for ever, it's not like he's going to come down and check, is it?".  Which begs the question of how they know this river ends in a "sunless sea"?  Clearly they haven't followed the river all the way to it's terminus or they'd have measurements for those caverns ("One thousand six hundred and twenty two parasangs").  Plus, an underground sea, with no way for it's waters to evapourate or otherwise diminish, will inevitably back-fill and cause disastrous flooding.  Coleridge; splendid poet, rather less adept at hydrological analysis. Art!

Down to a quite sunny sea, actually

     That's a matte shot, in case you were wondering, and even if you weren't.  Ten brownie points if you know what happens next.

     Okay, motley, we're off for a trip to Whitescar Caves!

Not for the claustrophobic

Finally -

No, only kidding.  I didn't expect that four-line couplet to generate so much hot air.  But, with no editor we can do things on the fly*.

"Field Of Fire" By Jack Swaab

Since I have finished re-reading "The Martian" I am now back to the book above, which has quite as much about writing and receiving letters, buying perfume and eating as it does matters military.  Mail, in both the First and Second Unpleasantnesses, was an incredible boost to morale, at a time when everyone wrote to each other.  Art, if you post a picture of armour, then the Tazer cannon comes out.

To underline the next bit

     I have arrived at December 1944 in Jack's notes, and from what he writes, you can understand why armies in Europe didn't campaign in winter.  It rains ALL THE TIME.  Everywhere floods, and what's not flooded is muddy, muddy to the point of bogging down everything not on tracks.  Soldiery are wet, cold, dirty and miserable, their rations are often cold and disease is prevalent.

General Mud, aided and abetted by General Rain

    And this is the twentieth century!  Just imagine what state a medieval army would have been in.  Zoinks. Doesn't bear thinking about: "Anothr twentie menne dyed of th. bloodie flux last night; hurld theire boddies in a pitte and back to th. siege."

Finally -

Yes, for real this time.  Hey, I still have to finish annotating "Field Guns In France" as there's about 7 pages left to do, not to mention more episodes of "Callan" and "Fireball XL-5" to watch - er - the latter for - ah - research!  Yeah, yeah, research, that's it.  I shan't tell you the Youtube channel they're on, as the more people who know, the greater the chance of a leak or Youtube or ITV or whomsoever marching their lawyers in.

That building in the background rotates, for some reason

     And with that, Vulnavia, we are done!

*  Hmmm, that sounds strangely familiar.

Only Hair-Splitting Pedantry Can Save Us Now!

<Sighs> Not Really, But A Man Can Dream

Conrad hopes you liked his impromptu time-and-motion analysis of Starry Trek last night, all the result of a whimsical moment wondering "What if ..."  That's the good thing about not having an editor, you can do things on the fly.

No, Art.  NO.  There will be Tazers.

  Actually, hang on a moment <turns Electric Elephant Truncheon off> because that picture sparks a debate from what I remember about "The Fly".  It's from 1958 so I don't care if I post a whole lot of spoilers.  You've been warned.

     Okay, in the film our Resident Mad Scientist manages to matter-transport both  himself and a fly, resulting in the horrid upright houseflan above, and a fly with a human head and arm.  HOWEVER the houseflan retains it's human intellect, which is both highly convenient and It's In The Script,  meaning it doesn't immediately rush to to the dustbin and begin eating the contents (don't want an "X" rating, do we!).

It'll all end in fears.

     The conceit that this houseflan retains a human intellect is somewhat modified by another plot device, that this intellect will degrade over time, because that lends an element of time being of the essence.  You know, tension is the heart of drama.

     HOWEVER - and if you are familiar with BOOJUM! then you saw that coming a mile away* - we are also clued-in about a mysterious 'white-headed fly' which transpires to be the original buzzing bluebottle that got molecularly intermingled with the human earlier on.  We even witness it's almost being eaten alive by a spider.  Art!

"Help me!  Help me!"
(Classic dialogue Shakespeare would have been proud of)

     The thing is - this is a human head and arm on the body of a fly, hence a humly.  Which appears to have human intellect rather than an IQ of 0.00067, since it can speak in comprehensible English and understands the concepts of imminent peril, not to mention human compassion and mercy. Insect politician my hairy white hindquarters!

     That's not all.  How can this humly possibly manage to articulate speech when it has no lungs?  Go on, try speaking whilst not breathing in or out and see how completely silent you are.  AND I have to ask - us hair-splitting pedants like to be thorough - what is this head and arm using for blood?  Hmmm?  Because an insect's circulatory system certainly doesn't use haemoglobin to transport oxygen around the body.

"Vincent mourned his inability to make viable tennis-nets."

     Of course, I could be overthinking this a little ...

"Jinx"

This word came up in polite conversation today, where Your Humble Scribe castigated Georgina for welcoming in the Spring.  Really.  Georgina has lived in This Sceptred Isle for her whole life and ought to know better when it comes to both seasons and weather.

https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=spellbound%20scents%20and%20fragrances

     Let me sweeten the blow with a link to her perfumery.

     Of course, Conrad then had to wonder, "Where does 'Jinx' come from?" because that's the way his mind works (and it's too late to change now).

     Okay, my Collins Concise states that it's probably from the Dutch, which makes a nice change from Latin, derived from "Jynx", which is " - the genus name of the wryneck" which itself comes from the Greek "Iunx", which was their name for the wryneck - " - a bird used in magic".

     What?

Can you eat it?

     Conrad unsure if the dictionary compilers were on their ninth gin and tonic by then, or if they are simply making it up ("Go on, go on, who's ever going to look it up or check!").   Still, there you have the origin of jinx.  Which we can enjoy reading about as thunderstorms and hail and tornadoes roll in for the whole of March.

Hard Rain

Ha!  Do you see what I did there?  Tornadoes - rain - asteroid descent from the heavens - destr - O never mind, I'm wasted here.  Wasted!  

Hard rain a-falling

    I forgot to add in another methodology of preventing that image above from ever happening: mass ejection.  This is undoubtedly a long-term plan, given the extent of the machinery required.  The plan would be to soft-land a series of robotic mining excavators, which would dig down into the body of the asteroid (or comet, we're not fussy), then begin hurling their mining spoil into space as ejecta.  Art!

     This is where Newton comes in, because every time these robots fire a one-ton lump of loam into space, they also divert the asteroid.  Very, very minutely, it is true; yet they still deflect it.  Not only that, every load they launch makes it that much easier for the next launch to deflect the now-smaller asteroid.  Of course - obviously! - this would take months to have any cumulative effect, if not years, so definitely one for the grandkids.

     Would it be difficult?  "Don't argue the difficulties," growled Winston Churchill.  "The difficulties will argue themselves."  Although if a difficulty confronted Winston Churchill it would probably run away and hide.

This Is Why Procedure

Conrad has finally finished re-reading "The Martian", and notes at the end that the incredibly driven Mitch Henderson - widely described by everyone as a bottomhole - is getting very, very nervous when it comes time for Mark Watney, the Martian of the title, to launch his cobbled-apart Martian Ascent Vehicle.  In reality Mitch isn't a bottomhole, merely a man with only one focus, who will die trying to get the job done.  Art!

BRITISH.  British, just so you know.

    Mitch getting nervous means he double and triple checks the ordinary, the routine and the mundane, because when one's team is under incredible stress and pressure, someone somewhere might overlook something.

     Does this matter?

     Why yes.  Art!

NO

YES

     Here we see NOAA - N', which had been bolted into the upright position shown at 2, before the technical team went off for a long lunch.  Along came another technical team, who removed all the bolts for shizzle and giggle another test, WITHOUT NOTIFYING TEAM ONE.  Who came back from lunch and tried to lay the satellite down to the horizontal position, with the results seen at 1.

     The details of how much it cost to fix the damage are "somewhat obscure", meaning that nobody wants to admit it, so it's got to be pricey.  And an example of why Mitch Henderson is right by default; yes, checking everything five times over costs time.  Do you want to have to rebuild your £25 billion nuclear submarine because they missed a weld?

"Depends.  Whose submarine are we talking about?"

Finally - 

I know that Kublai Khan decreed that a pleasure dome be erected at Xanadu, but was it a geodesic array?  Enquiring minds want to know!

"Get orf me shed!"

*  None of that metric drivel here.