Bleeding Literature

No!  I Am NOT Swearing!
As you ought to know by now, the official swear here at BOOJUM! is "Dog Buns", which sounds sufficiently rude and malodourous to qualify as invective, yet which allows us to keep our much-hallowed SFW status, although we did once post a picture of female statues not wearing a lot.
     I'm sure you're already ahead of me here, especially if you read yesterday's latter blog about "Night Train" fortified wine.  By "Bleeding" I refer of course to the most recent magnum opus by that South Canadian man of letters, Thomas Pynchon.
     Here an aside.  Tom's novels are long, dense, crammed with characters and often include words not used outside the mancave of a crossword compiler.  Yet he hits up the New York bestseller lists. Do people - a foul accusation pends dear reader! - do people simply buy his books so they can stick them on the shelves (with a small highlight directed upon them for emphasis) and thus look cool and trendy, without ever actually bothering to read them?
     "I say, old chap, steady on there!" I hear you gasp.  "That's a bit much.  Innocent until proven guilty and all that."
     Anyway, let us square up to -

     "Bleeding Edge" 
     I hope you appreciate the work I'm putting in here.  You can impress all your friends and sound frightfully intellectual without having to put the effort in, thanks to your humble scribe.  Of course I benefit as well, as it means I weed out the facts from the fictions, TP being a creatively tricky customer.
     All page numbers are from the Penguin 2004 edition.
    Page 14 "Bill Gross":  An American financial manager and author and when we say "manager" you are talking about hundreds of billions of dollars being managed.  That kind of manager.

Bill - he knows how to accessorise!

      Page 14 "301 Point 83":  Talk about obscure - this, apparently, is the code used by the World Health Organisation to classify borderline personality disorders.
     Page 16: "The Perejil Massacre": a ghastly little bloodletting in 1937, where Dominicans killed a very large number of Haitians, the total being disputed.  "Perejil" is Spanish for "Parsley", and legend has it that the Spanish-speaking Dominicans distinguished between Dominicans and French-speaking Haitians by how they pronounced the word.
     Page 20  "Night Train": Cheap fortified wine.  Apparently drinking a bottle results in the same effect as being smacked around the head with one.

This looks appropriate

      Page 21 "Harley Knucklehead": A variety of motorbike.  

This may be one.  Conrad not really interested

This Beer Here
I bought the first bottle as it seemed a bit of a challenge, although given my stomach the only thing I can't digest would be nuclear fuel rods.  I bought the second out of a sense of curiosity.  What is either Tyskie, or his friend Gronie?  What else does the label say?  What are the ingredients?  And (the kicker) what does it taste like?

     A brief chat with the lovely Sywia* at work brought about the information that the name is just a name.  I shall let you know about the taste.

Let's Just Muster A Bit Of Ghostbuster
As you should surely know by now, Conrad has a sweet tooth.  In fact, it might be more accurate to say that he is a six-foot tall sweet tooth that walks.  Anyway, trawling through the aisles of B&M yesterday, he came across this -

Yeah!  Maybe.

     "Key Lime Slime" is not, I admit, the most wholesome taste sensation ever described, yet understandable as a Ghostbusters promotion**.
     I shall have to inform Twinky Tom at work, as he too is - you might say <snicker> a bit hinky for Twinky***.

AAAAnd Here Is The Coincidence Hydra -
- come to munch on my buttocks once more.  I must taste delicious because the ravening beast is always coming back for more.  Anyway, here is a Tweet from that Man of the Millenium, Brooce Campbell!

Note that placename: KEWEENAW

     Super-cool guy.  Go check out "The Adventures of Brisco County Jr." after you finish here.
     Right.  The creepy thing is that Conrad keeps a copy of "The Kraken Wakes" at his deskside, as you never know when the urge to develop a screenplay from your notes will strike.  Art?

     "Pshaw!" I hear you exclaim.  "Pure nonsense.  Doesn't prove a thing," just before the BLOOD LEAPS OUT OF THE DISH - whoops, no, sorry, that was "The Thing", wasn't it?  What I meant was, take a look at this detail -

Ha!

     Kind of makes you wonder, doesn't it?



*  Occupying the conceptual space normally reserved for Anna, who is on holiday.
**  That film with girls in does not count.  IT DOES NOT!
*** It's perfectly safe, Vulnavia, he'll never read this.

Brek's It

Yes Indeed, Vulnavia!
Picture the scene, if you will: it's a cold, dark, wet, grey, miserable morning here in the Pond of Eden, which is living up to (or down to, if you like) it's name.  You dash downstairs to get breakfast before Mum sends you off to school, and she hits you with this:

The Brek is, indeed, Ready

     Porrige!  Porrige, the reason the Scots held off the Sassenachs for one thousand seven hundred and forty five years, perfect for a morning as described above.  That's not all - Art?

Force-field comes as standard

     It also gives you the Jedi-like ability to repel laser fire and mosquitoes.  Brek is, indeed, IT.
     What, you expected some political twaddle?

Conrad - HATES ALL MUSICALS!
One of the touching touchstones about your humble scribe is his blatant, manifest and overt hatred of musicals.  I still recall the combination of boredom and horror as a small child, having to endure "Carousel" on television at Christmas.
     I do make two honourable exceptions to my list, "The Return Of Captain Invincible", because it's a superhero spoof, and "The Blues Brothers", because it's a non-stop gag fest.  However - Art?

Well now -

     I do love the Evil Dead films, and Ash Versus The Evil Dead, so if this ever makes it to the small screen I may have to add another to my list.

Liebig Condenser
I tested this on Tom and he had no idea what it was.  Part of every Mad Scientist's lab, I would have thought, along with alembics and retorts.  Art?

A Liebig Condenser in action

     Allow me to explain the photo.  A LC is a hollow glass tube with an inlet and outlet in the outer jacket, into which you run a coolant, usually water.  You then allow a heated vapour into the LC, which cools it by condensation.  In the above photo the vapours produced in the flask heated by the bunsen burner end up as a liquid in the flask at left.
     You're welcome.

"On Thermonuclear War" By Herman Kahn
A little reluctantly, I have decided to go back and re-read this hefty tome, for a couple of reasons.
     "Blimey!" I can hear you say.  "Choice reading matter!"
     It's a broad and deep examination of the problems that thermonuclear weapons posed the world in 1960 and beyond.  It's long and complex and I stopped reading it for a good couple of months, which was as big a mistake as stopping reading Thomas Pynchon for a couple of months: you lose the plot.  By the time I got to the end I'd quite forgotten what "Type II Deterrence" was.
     So, I'm re-reading it and making notes.  A fun way to spend a Sunday evening ...

"Sloven"
If you have been paying attention over the past three years, then you know our pictures and photographs are provided courtesy of Art.  Who is, to put it politely, an idiot of the first water.  He cannot be trusted to get anything right - "Close enough" appears to be his favourite caption - unless regularly threatened with the BOOJUM! corporate Tazer.  Not only that, he possesses a worrying liking for coal, and is entirely too fond of being stuck in the septic sump as a punishment - hence the Tazer, although of late we cannot tell if his shrieks are of pain or pleasure.
     Art, in other words, is the very definition of a "Sloven" - a dirty or uncouth person*.

Art.  On a good day

     Which, naturally, got your modest artisan wondering where the word comes from.
     Flemish, apparently, that dialect from the Spanish Netherlands.  From "Sloef" meaning "Dirty".  Art?

Art.  As seen by - Art

"Night Train"
I came across mention of this in "Bleeding Edge" - Tom's latest novel - and was curious, as the context appeared to indicate it was a wine.
     Kinda.
     I did a bit of Googling and found an hilarious site called "BumWine", "Bum" here being the South Canadian appellation for a person fallen upon hard times, not the Anglo-Saxon vulgarism for "Bottom".  Herein the link:

http://bumwine.com/nighttrain.html

     I said "kinda" above as this stuff is the Demon Drink in bottled form: cheap and strong.  The description says that the "Night" part is because it sends the drinker to sleep, and Conrad expects the "Train" part is because the day after you feel as if you'd been hit by one.  

Night Train - Express version

*  "Person" is pushing it, frankly