Dog Buns!

That, Gentle Reader, Is BOOJUM!'s Official Swear
I think I may have stolen it from "Adventure Time" and a quote about smelling like dog buns.  I doubt these buns are actually any kind of baked goods, though I can stand to be corrected.
     It also reminds me of the Swears present in 2000AD, specifically "Judge Dredd".  Given that small children were able to purchase the comic, you couldn't have Ol' Stony Face venting his anger with a load of foul-mouthed invective, so he came out with terms like "Grud!"  or "Drokk!" instead.
     None of which has anything to do with why I began with Dog Buns!
     You see, we were due to whiz off at 9 to the car boot sales at Bardsley and Bowlee, so your humble scribe got up at 8 ante meridian - okay, okay, 8:20 - to rinse and razor, only to discover that - car boot sales were off due to weather.
     Drokk!

That, too

Conrad, Fighting YOUR Corner!
Well, your corner if you were one of the cast or crew of "Navy Seals vs. Zombies", which I have banged on about before.  I do like this film, despite it's flaws, several of which come from simply having a small budget and limited time to edit before release.  I registered with IMDB and rated it a 6.

"Thanks for the kind words, Conrad!"

     I also posted my own review, just to balance out the naysayers, who all come from the IMDB Forum (now extinct), in spirit at least.
     "Can you expound on that, O Wise And Prescient Film Critic?" I hear you - is that flattery or sarcasm?  I shall treat it as flattery.
     Oh yes, the IMDB Forums.  There were threads for every film on IMDB, and you can guarantee that, in every individual film's Forum, there would be one idiot loudly stating that "This is the worst film ever made".  Guarantee.

Is Ben Folds still alive?  Fingers crossed ...

"Troop Leader" By Bill Bellamy
More exploits of Bill and his British brethren.  One page 140 he mentions an October 1944 advance on the Dutch town of s'Hertegenbosch, which is interesting as I spent a summer working at a pickle factory there in 1983.

The delights of the 'Bosch

     Once the war was officially over, Bill became part of the occupation forces in Germany and came face-to-face with the Ruffians, who do not come out of it well - scruffy, dirty kleptomaniacs with itchy trigger fingers, by his account.
     Prior to the end of shooting, Bill took command of a South Canadian Chaffee tank, which was well-liked for it's reliability and low profile, both important factors for a reconnaissance vehicle.  It also came with infra-red sights, which I didn't realise the Allies used during the Second Unpleasantness.

3D Chaffee

     What's that?  Oh, the review I wrote for NSVZ?  Wouldn't you rather have a 5,000 word dissertation on how "Earthman, Come Home" could be adapted into a film? 
     Okay, fine, fine, have it your way -

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Make no bones about it, this is a low-budget zombie film. Having said that, it constitutes a blast from start to stop, and is well worth 97 minutes of your time. I suspect those who rated it less than 4 stars were expecting sets, props and effects akin to "World War Z" - sorry, not going to happen - $$$, remember. It is refreshingly free from the normal clichés, and even manages to shoehorn in an explanation as to why the SEALs are not bulging with miniguns and M2s and M240s. There is one cliché present POSSIBLE SPOILER!!! - "I've been bitten yet am not going to admit it" - but this applies to several characters, so it may not be all that spoilery. I also loved the line "This may be the most stupid thing we've ever done." And how things suddenly change in mid-flow.

There you are.  I kept it concise.

Have You Ever Wondered -
 - exactly how a radio telescope is constructed?  I mean, look at the Parkes RT in the Land of Larrikins.  Art?

How?

     That's Australia, for the confused.  So, look at that enormous great dish; how was it attached?  A big throw and crossed fingers?
     No!

Aha!

     Attached like the petals of a flower, piece by piece.  Rather like giant Meccano, I would say.

Some native Larrikins upgrading the dish

     FYI, the Parkes RT began operations in 1961 and is still in use today.

Where To Begin - Or End?

None Of That "Sound of Music" Nonsense -
 - about beginning at the beginning.  I've never seen the film, never intend to and do not feel any poorer for this omission.  What I mean is how, when cruising teh interwebz, one thing seems to lead to another.  Take the case of "Ice Station Zebra", which I mentioned in passing whilst clerihewing away at Alastair MacLean.  I Googled for a picture and got the cinema poster - 

With a British hero (Pat, on the right)

     - which you would kind of expect, except - what's this?  An odd-looking photograph entitled "Underwater Ice Station Zebra" came up amongst the other picture results.  Art?

What on earth is this?

     It isn't immediately obvious, so I clicked on a link and this begins to sound more like ISZ that ISZ did.  Okay, that's film canisters that you see there, sitting on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean at a depth of over 16,000 feet.  How did they get there?  They were ejected from a Key Hole HEXAGON spy satellite in July 1971 - those wicked South Canadians in action, don't you know.  Normally they came down in a 'bucket' that deployed parachutes, and the whole thing was snagged in mid-air by a specially-adapted C130 aircraft. Art?

Thus

     This is probably beginning to sound more like James Bond than ISZ, but that's a real photo of the aircraft in question.
     The third 'bucket' suffered parachute failure, the whole thing hitting the Pacific at about 500 miles per hour; except there wasn't any debris.  So the South Canadians, whom one cannot accuse of sitting on their behinds, promptly hired special deep-sea research vessels to locate and retrieve the bucket.
     Well, they did just that, but that enormous impact had shattered the thousands of feet of film and the reels literally fell apart en route to the surface.
     Still, Patrick McGoohan - the film's hero - is still British.

"Sins of the Fathers" By Lawrence Block
For those of you who don't know, this is the first Matt Scudder novel, hailing from 1976, at a point where Matt is still a practicing alcoholic.  At one point he is trawling through microfilm copies of the "New York Times", because this is well before teh interwebz. Art?

Microfilming

     He comments that it's tricky to research this way, because it is oh-so-easy to get distracted by other news articles, which is where we came in.  An interesting coincidence, wouldn't you say?

A Small Town In Germany
This is a 1968 novel by John Le Carre, which I haven't read.  
     "Don't you feel like a hypocrite, commenting on this when you've not seen "The s-"
     SILENCE!  Enough!  Stop interrupting!  I'm not talking about JLC's novel, I'm talking about a commentary on it from - that coincidence hydra is nipping at my nethers now - the New York Times, by journo Richard Boston.  The "Small town" is actually Bonn, so now we have three cities named.
     None of which has to do with what follows.  Yes, back to the usual wild tangential ravings, do try to keep up with these mental athletics, it's good for the mind*.

Boston!

     Ol' Rick mentioned a name I'd not come across before, alongside James Bond and John LC, that of "Adam Diment", who seemed to be something of a wunderkind amongst the spy thriller mileu.
     "Odd," mused your humble hack.  "I don't recognise the name."

Kept small because of lingerie

     That's because he only wrote 4 books and then vanished in 1972, never to write again.  His reasons for such a disappearance are unclear, although a more recent contact said that he disliked the fame bit of being rich and famous.  His books were going to be reprinted, but I can't be bothered to see if they have or not because - 

Each Step Is The Inevitable Consequence Of The Preceding One
Well of course it is, it couldn't be the consequence of the subsequent one, could it?  Unless you're whizzing about in the TARDIS**.  Adam Diment's vanishing reminded me of "The Wonderful Death of Roger Stone", a short story by Ray Bradbury about a literary wunderkind who suddenly stops writing, when he could have gone on to become as big as Hemingway or Faulkner or J. P. Martin.

Pause in the presence of greatness, gentle reader.

Finally - 
If Edna comes looking for my lap to perch upon, then I know the human occupants of The Mansion are either busy or have a laptop upon their lap, which <adopts Edna's point of view> IS PRETTY CLOSE TO A WAR CRIME AND THE HAGUE SHALL KNOW OF THIS - yet today she outdid herself by lying on my right arm, preventing me from entertaining my adoring public.  My fans.  You!  <sighs and gives up>.  Art?

*  Maybe.  
**  In which case, lucky you.

Conrad Is Cross!

Don't Worry Too Much -
 - not cross enough for you to get into the survival shelter after stocking up on the emergency rations; more a frowning annoyance than Fuming Nitric Ire.
     "Surely 'Cross' is your default emotional state?" I hear you quaver.
     Pausing only to note that you seem very worried about a man with access to thermonuclear weapons a very big catapult, I shall explicate.
     Last night I expected to sit down and watch the drama-mentary "Doctor Who" at 7:45 post meridian exactly; not 7:40, not 7:50 - 7:45*.  

A pretty creepy-looking bunch

     Instead what do my visual-input units (eyes, to you) perceive?  Some drivelling nonsense to do with The Ballfoot Game and a Cufpinal.
     IT SIMPLY WON'T DO!
     If this happens next Saturday then expect a very severe letter being sent to the Beeb.  VERY SEVERE!
     Also I wasn't aware that this was part 2 of a three-part story and I was left hanging high and dry as the end credits scrolled up.
     So, yes, Conrad is cross.  

Cross, but not this cross.  So don't panic.

The Curse Of Conrad
You may recall, in the course of one of my clerihews, that I poked gentle fun at the musician Ben Folds, and then had to hurriedly check and see if he was still alive.
     Fortunately for Ben, he is.  This might change in the near future due to the Curse of Conrad, which appears to strike every time I discover a group or musician I really like; they immediately break up (thank, The Mars Volta) or die.  I have thought about ending the career of some of music's performing chimps by suddenly 'liking' them and waiting for the thunderbolt to strike, but I just can't stomach it.  Damn you, hip street cred!

Conrad: hip, street and cred
(In his own head)

Those Clerihews Again
We shall stick with the literary world, and I have checked; all the following are safely dead, and you can't blame the Curse of Conrad because they choked it before I started reading their works.  More prosaically, you can't sue me, either as it's not possible to slander the dead**.

Agatha Christie

Had an odd history.

She lived solely on egg and beans,

And so farted a lot, and wore jeans.

     That second line is correct, anyway.  She famously upped and disappeared in 1926, for reasons never made clear.  She possibly under-estimated the furore her disappearance would case, with 1,000 police and 15,000 volunteers searching for her.  Nice to be missed!  Talking of murder mysteries, Dorothy L. Sayers was inspired enough by this vanishing to write "Un-natural Death".

Hercules Poirot.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Burned the midnight oil.

This was risky, because he fell asleep

And burned the house into an ashy heap.

     Of course this isn't true!  You can't destroy the material world with a metaphor, that would be silly.  A silly as the inventor of one of the most rational people in fiction (Sherlock Holmes, although Professor Challenger would also suit) believing in Spiritualism.  No - hang on -

You cannot deny the awesomeness of that moustache, though.

Alistair Maclean

Lived in Aberdeen.

He liked to in the gloaming roam,

Which inspired "The Guns of Navarone"

     None of this is true.  He was born in Glasgow and lived in Shettleston and Switzerland, although he might have roamed a bit.  Also, the USN Captain in "Ice Station Zebra" is a dumpy little chap, the complete opposite of Rock Hudson in the fillum.

Also, the Russian paratroopers aren't equipped with Sinister weapons

"Troop Leader" By Bill Bellamy
Further exploits of Bill and "A" Troop with their Cromwell tanks.  As I already mentioned, Bill never expressed a worry about engaging the Teuton panzers, and rather more concern about their anti-tank guns and Panzerfausts.  Fortunately for his own skin and that of his other four crew members, they never got hit by either.
     They did, however, get shot up by a 4-barrelled anti-aircraft gun, 20mm calibre, which took a pot at their front as they incautiously rounded a corner to have a shufti at a destroyed bridge.  Their driver hurriedly reversed out of trouble and the whole crew had a look at their tank.

Camo'd up

     This is the point where their Light Aid Detachment sergeant took it upon himself to comprehensively track down the source of their tank - inspired by the sight of 20mm cannon rounds having gone 2 inches into the tank armour and stuck there as if welded.
     This particular Cromwell tank was made out of mild steel, not armour plate; it should have been used for training only, as it certainly wasn't proof against anything bigger than the 20mm cannon shells it had barely resisted.  Being considerably lighter than a proper Cromwell, however, it had an even higher speed.  So the crew kept it.

A properly armoured AFV

*  I would say 19:45 but that might confuse things as we're talking time-travel here
**  If you are a lawyer reading this and dispute it, go very far away very quickly.