The Narration Of Reanimation

By That Title Alone You Can Guarantee There Will Be Zombies

Quite possibly tanks, but only a slim chance of atom bombs, because yes Vulnavia, you can have too much of a good thing.  

     So!  Conrad was wondering what that Thai film about zombies running amok* in a hospital was called.  Art!

No CGI used for the blood and gore effects

     The title is a play on the old name for Thailand: 'Siam', with the 'Z' now replacing the initial 'S'.  It's pretty good, set in a dystopian future reminiscent of 'Interstellar', where food is scarce - that concept right there is a nightmare horror scenario for Conrad - and desperate measures are ta

     ANYWAY okay, that urgent question now answered, we can move onto the hot button topic of the moment: 'Zomvivor'.  This is another Thai zombie thriller, set in a university rather than a high school (sorry if you were expecting 'All Of Us Are Dead' 2.0'), with long flashbacks concerning the lead characters and their life pre-crisis.  Thus they are rendered people you know something about instead of mere ciphers.  Art!

     My camera's idiosyncratic picture of the credits; please forgive the burned-out LEDs and the way it applies a blue gloss on white highlights.  The theme song, 'Still Alive', is very catchy and has a distinct Adele vibe circa 'Skyfall'.  One thing you notice in the credits is how looooong Thai surnames are - 'Meebangyang' is pretty concise; 'Phomphhadungcheep' is more typical.

     ANYWAY AGAIN the credits are in stark white 3D, with the odd zombie lurching around, until a tidal wave of blood as shown above sweeps in, PERHAPS SLIGHTLY FORESHADOWING, swamping everything at ground level.  Art!

     The plot and characters restage a few of the clichiést clichés that ever clichéd, that picture above being one of them.  Here is one the minor characters with a badly sprained ankle, who can barely hobble, and she's being helped by only one other person?  It would make more sense to have two carrying her but I suppose you need a victim who will reanimate and turn up later on to cause one of her mates to freeze at an inappropriate moment (guessing there).  Art!

     This is one of the university's medical lecturers, pondering about a syringeful of Something, watching over Ning's comatose mum, who pretends to be a delivery driver but whom is mixed up with secret medical experiments.  Definitely dodgy doings.  Art!

     Said syringeful of something sinister.  After all, why keep it separate from all the other medical kit?  It'll all end in tears, if not blood.  Art!

     One of a pair of survivors who have ventured outside at daylight, separate from the 14 other survivors hiding in the library.  As you can tell, there has been a fair bit of chaos and the cleaning lady hasn't gotten around to mopping blood off cars, mostly because she's now a zombie too.  Art!

     Our two heroes in the cab of a truck with the keys still in the ignition.  Both are armed, one with a pistol and the other with a hatchet, which is a plus mark for the scriptwriters, even if Hatchet Guy proves to be staggeringly inept with his chopper.  Also, what's wrong with this picture?  THEY LEFT THE DOORS OPEN.  Minus mark for the scriptwriters.  This comes back to bite them on the glutes after a zombie begins to take an interest in them, after it appears, from nowhere of course - not sure if this is a minus mark for the scriptwriters or if they're just 'paying homage' to every other zombie flick ever made.  I mean, a zombie in a convenience store refrigerator?  Yes 'Land Of The Dead' I'm looking at you.

     ANYWAY ANYWAY Art!

     They do?  Who?  Art!

     Ah, the ravening hordes of the undead.  'Zomvivor' seeks to make it's ravening hordes of the undead a bit different from other ravening hordes of the undead, because these ones are fascinated to distraction by light sources in the night.  They cluster around to look at the university's street lights, which kept them predictably in one place.  Unfortunately, under martial law, the army kills all power and water at 20:30 to isolate the infected zone.  Which means the revs - sorry, zombies - bimble about across the whole campus, making surviving even more difficult.  Art!

    This is Ning gaffer-taping a knife to a broomstick.  Non, very sensibly, told the other 13 to split up and find weapons, and Mook, again very sensibly, notes that the weapons need to keep the zombies at a distance.  I also forgot to mention that the 14 survivors are hiding in the library, which is being renovated and thus lacks any initial occupants.  Art!

     Proof that this is a wise move comes in - nothing happening overnight.  No zombies pop up out of nowhere or hidden corners or crevices.  Two plus points for the scriptwriters!

     Conrad will keep you updated as I watch more episodes.  I bet you can hardly wait.

Mixing It Up A Tad

Conrad, seeking to segue from one topic to another, wondered if Thais are big on pets or not, specifically dogs?

     Very much so.  Far too much, in fact.  Art!

     Most Thai pets are not spayed or neutered, and if they get kicked out or abandoned, they get fed by Thais, especially at Buddhist temples, thanks to the Buddhist stricture of compassion.  Consequently, there is a massive problem with stray street dogs, estimated at over a million.  A problem not going to go away soon, one fears.

"Dogs"

There we are, moving seamlessly from one topic to another.  Go me.  This is the first proper track on Pink Floyd's 'Animals' album, bar the opening acoustic bookend 'Pigs On The Wing'.  Why is it called 'Dogs'?  O I thought you'd never ask!

You gotta be crazy, you gotta have a real need

You gotta sleep on your toes, and when you're on the street

You gotta be able to pick out the easy meat with your eyes closed

And then moving in silently, down wind and out of sight

You gotta strike when the moment is right without thinking

    Street dogs.  Do you see?  How everything is connected?  ANYWAY the idea is that the Hom. Sap. version of a dog is an apex predator, utterly ruthless in business and social interactions.  I was thinking of posting all the lyrics, but there's another 350 words, so that delight will have to wait until another day.  Art!

Dogs plural

More Mechanical Mishappery

I did miss out one of these clips from 'Discovery Tech US' because it was an electrical arc accident with no human input, meddling or mishandling.  Art!

Timeframe 01:49

     Ah, yes, look at all that potentially hazardous machinery, drills and lathes and HOLY DOG BUNS!  Art?

Timeframe 01:50

Timeframe 01:51

No human input here, unless that guillotine door hadn't been maintained or installed properly.  No information other than 'kicks_mechanic' posted it on Youtube 4 years ago, and, predictably, the ghouls in his Comments all complained that the Chap In The Hat was nowhere near the door when it fell.  What do you want, two halves of him?

Another Entry In The 'Museum Of Failure'

Being a car, Your Humble Scribe knew nothing of it, and cares less, except as a filler to get the Word Count up.  the junction   Art!

     Please welcome the 'Lightyear Zero', which was touted by Dutch company Lightyear as the first solar-powered family car.

     Conrad can see an immediate problem with this merely by looking out of the window.  Here in the Allotment Of Eden during December it's not daylight until 09:00 and the light is beginning to go by 15:00, and the rainclouds have been shedding their aqueous cargo all day long.  Ergo no sun.

     Perhaps they have better weather on the Continent?  Regardless, the L0 initially came with a price tag of €119,000, going on the market in 2021 STRIKE THAT a price tag of €250,000, going on the market in 2022.  Three months after production began they filed for bankruptcy, having produced as many as twelve cars.  Ooops.

     That's it for today, Vulnavia!

* From the original Malay 'amoq' meaning 'furious assault'.  You're welcome.

The Gravitas Of Gravid

Talk About A Weighty Matter!

"Conrad cackled triumphantly -" for a couple of reasons.  Firstly, I need to explain away today's title, for you may not be as loquacious as I am, nor as modest.  'Gravitas' means to have a sober, serious, contemplative nature, or to be authoritative in conduct and judgement.  It comes directly from the Latin <spit hack> 'Gravitas', meaning 'Weight', itself derived from 'Gravis', meaning 'Heavy'.  Art!

One of the few covers not featuring nearly-naked women with swords or female robots fighting

       'Gravid' is defined by my 'Collins Concise Dictionary' as 'The technical term for "pregnant"' but an obstetrician would be well advised to use the non-technical term for 'pregnant', that being 'pregnant', as informing a husband that his wife can be served up alongside steak and potatoes and covered with a meat sauce might earn a thump or two.

     ANYWAY - ooops, the spine of my CCD just came apart, the poor hardworking thing - we have yet another tale of manglement, as related by the hubbo of a pregnant worker.  Yes, it is from South Canada, however did you guess!  Art?

Selfie of the manager in question

     
     Note to readers: I've had this tale on my Word Cheat Sheet for months and months, so did due diligence and checked that it hadn't appeared already on BOOJUM! and it hasn't.  So we're good to go.

     The tale was narrated by Direct Retribution Wrathful Husband Opponent, hereafter DRWHO - a bell is ringing faintly in the background - in response to the question on Quora 'Has someone ever been fired because of you?'

     Yes, he replied.  Four people.  Two of whom he reported to the store he worked at for stealing, and another for, in his own words - 

"making disgusting sexual comments about a co-worker (he was a serial sexual harasser and it was the last straw). I did feel a little to blame when his wife found out why he was fired, she left him, and he un-alived himself, but he was a grown-assed man who knew better and had been punished for it before."

     DRWHO not one to take anything lying down, it seems.  

     As for Number Four - Art!

One of these is Bottomhole Manglement

     His wife's second pregnancy had been difficult and troublesome along the way, meaning she needed - not wanted, needed - to go to the hospital.  The business knew she was pregnant, which is kind of obvious after the third trimester, yet her supervisor, Moron Advancing Short-TERmism, hereafter MASTER told her if she went to the hospital, she would be fired.  Art!

Stylus skipping and taking you out of the moment

     Er- WHAT?!

     Any British or European manager reading the paragraph above would be having kittens, whom themselves would be having kittens*.  Firing a woman because she is pregnant is a good way to get an Employment Tribunal fining you an enormous amount, dragging your name into the gutter and from there to the sewer, and being forced to take the ex-employee back.  UK and EU laws take an extremely dim view of this straight-out-of-the-Fifties manglement approach.

     So, it has to be said, do South Canadian State Labour Boards - if the matter comes to their attention.  Given his conduct so far, do you think DRWHO is going to shrug his shoulders and carry on regardless, whistling a merry tune and letting the MASTER win?

     NO HE IS NOT.     Art!

     This is just put up as an example illo, different states call them by different names.  A couple of days after the sacking, DRWHO took Winsome Obstetric Wife, hereafter WOW, to their state unemployment office.  Their case worker listened to the tale with stunned disbelief, then went to drag one of their lawyers into the meeting, who rubbed his hands with glee and danced a little jig was also gobsmacked at the sheer illegality being carried out by MASTER.

     "It was the easiest case I have ever had," he said afterwards, happily rubbing his hands and chortling with glee adding it to his professional resumé.

     Net results:  

1)  MASTER gets fired, no euphemistic nonsense about 'let go' - fired.

2)  WOW got her normal wage across the entire pregnancy.

3)  WOW got an additional 6 weeks pay post-partum ('after baby arrives')

4)  WOW gets her old job back at the same wage in the same position

Art!

     The business seems to have suffered a brain-fart of epic proportions, being an Industry Deficient In Observing Things, hereafter IDIOT.  They had just fired a manager for illegally firing WOW, then had to pay her and then pay extra, and they -

     Tried to offer her a different job with more manual work and chemical exposure.

     Off they both went to the State LAbour Board lawyer.

     "It was the second easiest case I have ever had," he said afterwards.

     WOW was awarded another 6 months salary.

     Moral of the story: don't commit stupid crimes otherwise a SLAB will fall on you, and gravity - itself derived from 'Gravis', meaning 'Heavy' - hurts.

Is It A Slow News Day?

I mean, there's always the Orange Land Whale to generate headlines, either falling asleep or describing the Wonderland Zoo that is his mind, and his minions getting away with - ah - er - well, let's not go there.  Plus the war in Ukraine, China eyeing Taiwan, Test cricket, sharks in the Solent thanks to global warming - there's a lot going on in the world.

     Except apparently not.  As evidence I offer - Art!

     Conrad has no idea who she is and cares less, and a headline about her haircut?  Talk about filler.  Art!

Soon to hit Career-Ending Birthday

     O Rly?  Another nothingburger.  She's a lot older than I realised.  She may be too old to appear in the next 'X-Men' film, which isn't due until she's nearly a pensioner.  Well, they could bring her back as 'Shower' instead of 'Storm' and I want a royalty if that happens.

A Different Take On A Christmas Cake

Conrad, being stricken with procrastination, has not baked any cakes for ooooh a couple of months now, and ought to have done an Xmas cake at least a couple of weeks ago, so that it could mature for at least a month, interspersed with spirits being poured upon it.  Art!

     Being me, I dug around on teh Interwebz looking for recipes, and found one that has the usual list of ingredients, most unusually done in metric measures since South Canadians love using 'Cups', 'Roods' and 'Bushels' and such ilk.  What makes this one stand out is that the dried fruit (which I usually soak overnight and then drain), citrus zest and juice, butter and sugar are all put in a pan and brought to a boil before simmering for 5 minutes.  You then cool this mixture before adding in the rest of the ingredients.  

     The baking temperature is stated as Gas Mark 2, which seems low even for a fruit cake, and 2 hours cooking time, which again seems on the low side.  I'm guessing the time will be more like 4 hours, so Saturday baking here we come!

Back To Bovvie

Yes, we have lots of photos still to be posted up, including ones from the Ukrainian Exhibition, which I have to check and classify.  There are 3 vehicles I can identify straight away - the T-72, Challenger and M113 but shall have to dig around a bit for the others.  Art!

From sheep to marsupial

     Say hello to one of the earliest purpose-designed Armoured Personnel Carriers; this is the 'Kangaroo', which is the old Canuckistanian 'Ram' tank with the turret removed, leaving space for an infantry section in the hull.  Unlike half-tracks as used by the Teutons, this thing had proper armour, 3" thick, and was fully tracked, no nonsense about wheels complicating the design.  Yes, there was a hole where the turret had been, but it would take a shell exploding directly over the Kangaroo to affect it, which is unlikely.

     The infantry loved them, being behind a nice thick slab of armour plate, yet there were never enough of them, even with 500 being produced.  Art!

     The uniquely irreplaceable David Fletcher and a slightly elevated look at a Kangaroo.

Finally -

Just so you know, I am nearly at the end of Episode 2 of the Thai zombie series 'Zomvivor' and have gone back to review Episode 1 and take photos.  Conrad anticipates there will be far too much to review and too many photos to put up, so I expect you'll get a potted version of it over several blogs once I've worked my way through Episode 7.  I bet you can hardly wait.  Art!

     Already vastly better than that dismal Sork series I cannot even remember the name of, and cannot be bothered to check.

     That's all folks.  See you on the other side!

*  They must have been gravid, too.

An Editorial Dilemma

Greetings, Gentle Reader

One of Conrad's constant cognostications is what to put in the Intro, because you can only entertain people with tanks, atom bombs, zombies, Codewords and Colin Furze for so long, before people get fed up and demand more variety.  What else might we choose to defame in depth?  Art!

Not sure how to , describe this, except as 'flattering'

     Hmmm. That's the AI Art Generator working off a prompt of 'Sharon Stone Oliver Stone Devyn Stone'.  We can probably agree which is Sharon. This simple 6 name input might very well generate pages and pages of content, thanks to acting, directing, scriptwriting, sardonic legal commentary and 'Harvey Birdman Attorney At Law' for which we shout hurrah!  Fecundity it's own reward.

     ANYWAY I was wondering what to concentrate upon for the Intro, as the topic of 'Stones' has not been exhausted at all, see above for evidence.

     Then there is the secondary optional input, which I have decided might be centred around 'Dogs'.  Art!

     Your Humble Scribe has never understood what Battersea Power Station had to do with this album.  If you squint hard you can see the big pink pig floating between two of the chimneys.

     ANYWAY my point is that there are an innumerable number of dogs present in the 'Dog' section of my 'Brewer's Dictionary Of Phrase And Fable', but which only have a single line or a short paragraph entry.  How to craft a solid Intro from fifty different miniscule entries?  Art!

     Dogs it is.  Here's the 'Doge' meme.  Those of you with sharp eyes and a good memory will recognise this breed as a Shiba, which is the breed used as an emblem by NAFO - The North Atlantic Fella Organisation (also Fellarinas), whom are dedicated to fighting orcish disinformation on teh Interwebz.  HOWEVER - yes that word again - the Doge meme became viral in 2013, which predates the orcish invasion of Krim, so the two are entirely coincidental.  Art!

 The best thing about DOGE? It’s dead.

By Larry Edelman Globe Columnist,Updated December 1, 2025, 2:00 p.m.

21

Elon Musk in the Oval Office on May 30, his last official day in government. Tom Brenner/For The Washington Post*

     The other iteration of DOGE, it being the so-called 'Department Of Government Efficiency', as helmed by Elong Tusk.  Conrad is unsure if the acronym was pronounced 'Dowg' or 'Dogee', which is immaterial as it was quietly disbanded in November this year, eight months ahead of schedule and with no glorious fanfare about how much money it had saved.  Elong himself had departed it months earlier, when he and BOOH had a falling-out and there was much hurling of toys from prams.  Dogegone, you might say.  Art!

'But Conrad!  Those are cattle!  What can they possibly have to do with dogs?' I hear you quavil (if that wasn't a word it is now and I want royalties if if ever makes the dictionaries).

     Because of South Canadian slang, I'll have you know.  

"Whoopee ti yi yo, git along little dogies"

    From an anonymous cowboy song.  The 'dogies' in question are calves, orphaned or otherwise motherless, which had to be fed by the cowboys on a diet of flour and water, resembling dough.  Hence the nickname 'dough-guts', which transmuted over time into 'Dogies'.

    Nothing to do with the canine species, it's just a song lyric that has stuck with me for a good fifty years and Conrad only just learned the real meaning.  Art!

    I reckon my 'Brewer's' deserves a co-writing credit for this Intro.  Under the heading 'Dog' it gifts this noun with three different meanings: items to do with canis familiaris itself, things having a 'mongrel' quality about them such as 'Dog Latin' and things of an inferior ranking, of which there are many.  Art!

Dog Rose

     This is a species of wild rose, which is one reason the canine appellation is attached.  The other is that the Greeks of antiquity believed it cured the bite of a mad dog.  Given how rational and analytical the Greeks were, I don't believe this erroneous concept would have persisted for very long.

     Then there is 'Dog Grass', another name for 'Couch grass' (back, JD, back!) which, if Art will do the honours -

      'Tis a frothing nuisance to gardeners, but is eaten by dogs when they are off their food, acting as a purge to empty their stomach, which is probably more detail than you wanted or needed, and quite enough to end this Intro.

     Fine, one Intro completed and we've only begun to lightly buff the surface of 'Dog'.  This one will run and run.  I bet you can hardly wait.

Lost And In Translation

'NAFOViking', one of the Norwegians who posts regularly on Twitter and whom has been swanning about eastern Europe and Ukraine of late, posted a picture that piqued my interest, to put it mildly.  Art!

     OF COURSE - obviously! - when I go to find his Tweet, Elong Tusk has deliberately hidden it, so I've had to make do with a Finish advert, which will boil his urine, as he is always mocking Suomi.  

     DO NOT TRANSLATE THE BRAND!  We're not going to do on the blog as it describes Putinpot as an <ahem> 'male appendage'.  

     It seemed that a British brewery sold PH, which Conrad was hopeful about.  Art!

Three years too late

   

       Alas, they only brewed it in 2022, raising a couple of thousand pounds for Ukraine, and then discontinued.  Were there any other sources?  Yes, there were!

     Except they were all South Canadian, and the costs to import would make it prohibitively expensive.  

     It seems, from NAFOViking's post, that PH is still available in cans in Ukraine, but possibly not for export.  I shall have to dig deeper on this one and see if anything can be done before Christmas.  Because it would be surpassingly cool to turn up to a New Year's party toting  a six-pack of this.  Might have to let people taste it first before giving them the translation. 

 More Muttonheads Mangling Machinery

Yes, we are back with 'Discovery Tech US' and more people determined to win a Darwin Award, or at the very least get a serious nomination for the present and consideration for the future.  Art!

     That script in the upper port corner is Cyrillic, so this clip is from either Serbia, Bulgaria, Ukraine or, most likely, Ruffia.  

     What's out of shot is a whacking big piece of industrial plant being moved from A to B via crane.  Art!

     Here's Nicolai The Numpty, blithely walking underneath the slung load, which is now casting a shadow, literal, upon the lower ranks of machinery.  Art!

     Ooops.  Thirty tons deadweight falling.  There's no soundtrack on this clip or you'd hear Nicolai screeching in fear shortly before an enormous crash.  Art!

     Whatever was - very definitely past tense - connected to this harness to lift the machinery failed completely.  Now it, and what it hit, are going to need a rigourous check to see how much damage has been sustained.

     What about Nicolai The Numpty?  Art!

     He survived.  That's him, making Usain Bolt look laggardly, as he skeddadles and makes a personal promise to himself never to stand under a load being lifted.

The Algorithm Has Lost It's Rhythm

I have posted in the past about how the tracking algorithm swings wildly from realistic, to barely possible, to flattering heights of silliness.  We have reached another of those heights.  Art!

   Ten per cent of the previous month's total IN ONE DAY?

   You would think the FSB would try and diminish my totals, not inflate them.  Or - is that saturnine smirk on the face of Kyrylo Budanov there for another reason?  Art!

     Hmmm perhaps we are big in the forests and swamps of Suomi.  Perhaps.

Go On, Let's Mock 'Tank Encyclopedia' Again

As has come to be a bit of a tradition here on BOOJUM! let us put up an illo.  Art!

     Leaving aside the impertinent fact that they CONTINUE to mis-use the Bob Semple tank, very definitely one of the worst armoured fighting vehicles to ever exist, the Teutons were not alone in carrying out such engineering feats.  Art!

     The British Vickers Mk VI Anti-Aircraft tank, mounting 4 BESA machine guns in a power-driven turret, brought into use after Dunkirk to counter the Luftwaffe.  I have a couple of them in 1/300 scale somewhere.  Art!

     The British Crusader Mk III Anti-Aircraft tank, mounting a pair of 20 mm Oerlikon cannon, for use in accompanying armoured divisions coming ashore after D-Day.

     So, Teutons not alone or unique.  We may come back to this.  I bet you can hardly wait.

     And that is it, Vulnavia!

  * It took some sleight of hand to steal this from the 'Boston Globe' website