I Warned You

I WARNED YOU!

Yes, BBC, I'm looking at you.  All these click-bait-y items that ask a question they ought to have already answered; it's a dubious editorial policy and we here at BOOJUM! cordially detest it.  The Beeb is already on thin ice because of "Strictly Come Dancing", which Your Humble Scribe still suspects of being completely made up especially to annoy him.

     "What is he ranting about now?" I hear you quibble.  Art!

     NO.

     In fact the article is considerably more than mere swivel-eyed loonwafflery, as it examines the volume of global shipping and the inevitable accidents said transport undergoes.

     <sigh> I need to establish a background here, don't I?  Okay, the above event was when the 'Ever Given' managed to collide with the banks of the Suez Canal, and block it completely for six days.  It made the news across Planet Earth.  Art?

     Conrad remembers having a look at the problem when it happened -

BOOJUM!: Hoop Snakes (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

     They managed to shift it without needing to remove all those containers, for which a lot of people went "Phew!".  It would have been like the world's biggest ever game of Jenga.  Those two pictures above don't really give a sense of scale.  Art!

With two barely-visible puny humans lower starboard for scale

     In my opinion, which is the only one that matters, it looks like a ship made out of Lego.

     ANYWAY it brought home to people that there are certain logistical 'choke points' across the globe when it comes to marine traffic, the Suez Canal being one of them.  Very few countries understand this better than This Sceptred Isle, because of The Second Unpleasantness.  Axis air and naval power meant that Allied freighters and warships could enter the Mediterranean via Suez, yet they could emphatically NOT travel across the Med from Gibraltar to use the Canal to leave.  Consequently they had to take the incredibly long trans-Africa route, which could add months to a voyage.  All those ships prevented from using the Canal thanks to the 'Ever Given's inattentive drivers had that as a dilemma: how soon would the canal be unblocked?  What delay is the backlog going to cause?  Is our cargo perishable?  Dare we risk sailing round Cape Horn?

     You may be wondering what this has to do with John Wyndham.  O I thought you'd never ask!  Do keep up, this is excellent mental exercise.  Back to "The Kraken Wakes", my favourite novel of his.

     SPOILERS AHOY*!

     YOU WERE WARNED!

     As you should surely know by now, the invading aliens infesting our planet's  abyssal deeps initially form a variety of barrage on the oceans surface, with a weapon that literally chops the bottom off any ship that crosses it.  They have another, more direct, weapon, which vibrates a ship apart by hitting it's resonant frequency.  These two methods of attack drastically curtail marine transport, a situation partially resolved by Ol' Johnny's assertion that two large aircraft working round the clock could substitute for a single ship.  Art!

     Conrad unsure of this in terms of stats and number crunching.  A 747, for example, which wasn't to be invented for another twenty years when TKW came out, can only carry 140 tons of freight, with distinct limitations on what dimensions this freight can be.  We may come back to this with more numbers, for as you know Conrad is a hair-splitting pedant of the worst kind.

     I admit we went a little off-track here; think of it as exercise for your brain.

Progress!

In two senses.  First of all, that circular jigsaw of the Moon.  Art!

     It's not easy!  Being circular means there are pieces with a very odd shape, and unlike your average square or rectangular jigsaw, there is no up and down, nor side to side, matrix to work from.  As you can tell, Conrad tracked down the missing edge piece.

     Secondly - Art!

     Your Humble Scribe is still battling* his way through this beast and am now at page 358, which isn't as impressive as it might seem as there are so many, many pictures.  It mentions two formal painting methods that were used after the event to portray it in retrospect: the panorama and the cyclorama, the latter of which I'd never heard of.  Art!

With puny humans for scale

     Ah, that makes more sense.  The book only has a few small details taken from the whole thing, which is admittedly enormous.  What you might call war in the round.

     No luck with "Age Of The Triffids" over on Abebooks.  Just so you know.

More "Tormentor"

Yes, and we're now up to part Six and page 36 of 81, so lots more lovely extracts lie in wait for you lucky, lucky people.

Dave Hargreaves came calling in the evening.

               ‘It’s like this,’ he said, rubbing the knuckles on one hand.  ‘One of my mates works for the Prison Service, a driver.  He ferries them between court and police cells and prison, so he’s got the inside info on who gets moved around and when.  Miller’s going to be shifted to prison tomorrow, eight o’clock in the morning from the police station.’

               Louis went to make his visitor a cup of coffee, thinking.

               ‘I’m afraid it’s going to be down to you,’ said Dave, apologetically.  ‘The feds know me by sight.’  He coughed in slight embarassment.  ‘Past history, and I went ******* mad when they told me what happened to Jen.  I swore to turn Miller into dogfood.  My mate says they’ll be looking for me, or other relatives.’

               ‘That leaves me out.’

               ‘Dead right.  ‘Cept you were like a dad to her.’

               Louis drank his own coffee, slowly.

               ‘You won’t get more than a couple of seconds to get Miller, and they’ll probably bring him out under a blanket.  Got any ideas?’

               ‘Oh, yes.  Yes I have,’ replied Louis, with relish.  ‘Can’t go into it now, but oh yes I’ve got an idea.’

The fruition of that idea meant he got up at the crack of dawn to travel into town on an early bus, pacing by the central Victorian police station.  Jen kept him company.  In fact her presence was vital, because she was the immaterial spy capable of breaching  stone walls to report back.

               Louis walked past the blank stone wall of the prison, past the inset door from which prisoners were taken, timing how long it took him to get from the corner of the station to the door.  Seven seconds.  Jen paced the distance, too, making sure she kept up.  A faint aura of radiant, hazy sparks came off her, worrying Louis.  Could he trust her to do what they’d agreed?

     Mister Murderer Miller is about to begin experiencing something utterly frightful.

     Dog Buns!  I went back and started reading it and that's ten minutes gone.

Finally -

What nasty weather, both freezing and damp.  Fortunately for Conrad I have acquired a strategic stockpile of newspapers, meaning there are enough Cryptics, Codewords and Skeletons to keep my fully occupied for the whole weekend to come, without needing to wither under the whether.  Don't think I don't already have multiple examples of the Codeword compilers pushing the boundaries of Codeword morals with - well, how fair is it to use "MACHISMO" as a solution?  I can tell you feel my anger.

*  Do you see wh - O you do.

Enough With The Quibbly Questions!

Conrad, As We Already Know -

Lives in a state of perpetual anger.  There is little about the modern world that does not irk him, and, as we also know, he is not slow to inform the world and his wife about the latest rancourous rage.

     Thus we have this.  Art!

From the BBC's website

     NO.

     Right, let's move on from that.

     Yes, this has to be one of the shortest Intros ever.

Gosh, what a grumpy old man I am!  Why would I ever want to 'learn to be happy' when I get such immense satisfaction from being perpetually angry?

I actually wrote this Intro last night, as Conrad couldn't be sure that the treacherous and despicable BBC wouldn't delete the article before dawn, knowing that they were bound to arouse someone's ire.

From Cuckoos To Triffids

We were discussing John Wyndham's "The Midwich Cuckoos" yesteryon, so of course - obviously! - Your Humble Scribe's mind ran to "The Day Of The Triffids", because who doesn't enjoy a cosy catastrophe or two?  I have just checked on the publication date - what's that?  You want a picture? O go on then.  Art!

Extreme gardening

     ANYWAY as I was saying, it was published in 1951, which is significant, because Sputnik didn't go aloft until 1957, beeping it's Sinister wicked way across the heavens.  Ol' Johnny has the global catastrophe that blinds 99% of the world's population as being an orbital weapons system gone amok, pretty presciently.  Later in the novel a mystery plague infects and kills survivors, with the implication that it, too, was a satellite weapon.  Hmmmm.  Unwise, really, putting a biological weapon into use, because diseases don't observe border protocols.  Art!

CAUTION! Not for human consumption

     These pictures are from the best adaptation of TDOTT, done by the marvellous and wonderful BBC in 1981.  There has been a sequel, approved by the Wyndham estate, "Night Of The Triffids", by Simon Clarke, which is mostly set in South Canada, which I've read, and is okay.  Even more interestingly for Conrad, a chap called John Whitbourne wrote "The Age Of The Triffid", which was NOT authorised by the Wyndham estate and which is only on sale in British America and the land of the Polite Australians, so I may have to look it up on Abebooks.  This, like NOTT, is set 25 years after the original and is an attempt to work out and explain 'What Happened Next'.  Art!

Proof I am not raving

     Conrad would like to float a theory here that might explain the apparent organised and intelligent behaviour of triffids, because as Ol' Johnny has his character Bill Masen explain, a dissected triffid possesses nothing like a brain.  Perhaps what he witnesses is a species of 'hive mind', one similar to that found in social insects like bees or ants, where the monad community expresses behaviour beyond the capability of individuals.  I dunno, it's only a theory.  

How d'ya like THEM! apples, huh?

     Motley!  Here's a machete and a flamethrower, go tend the garden.  And be careful of the Hopping Anti-personnel Mines, they're feeling tetchy today.

If I Were To 'Moon' You -

First of all WASH OUT YOUR FILTHY MINDS! Have you not got it through your concrete-covered crania that BOOJUM! is eminently SFW, and yes we did have a lady's bottom on once, but it was on a statue which makes it art and therefore okay.

     No, I am talking about the latest jigsaw, which is the first circular one I've done, and it's much harder than I anticipated, partly because there are no edges or corners, and partly because the subject matter is so low contrast.  Art!

     There are 59 pieces in that outer ring, and Conrad is uncertain if there really is a piece missing or if I've simply missed it, as there are 190 other pieces left in the box.  I guess we'll find out!

Much Madness And Horror The Soul Of The Plot

I nicked that from Edgar Allan Poe.  He can't complain, he's been dead for lo these many decades <checks> ah 1849.  On with my very own compilation of madness and horror, "Tormentor"!

Once he got home, Louis found Jen waiting for him, having made an omelette.

               ‘Mushroom, bacon and peppers,’ she proudly informed him.  ‘Involving lateral, rotary and reciprocal hand and wrist movements.  Chopping, whisking and stirring to you.’

               ‘Jen,’ he cautioned.  ‘This may be your first attempt at an omelette – not bad, not bad at all, actually – but please, don’t feel you have to look after me.’

               The spirit instantly began to broadcast sparks and a radioactive aura worthy of a malfunctioning nuclear reactor.

               ‘Look after you!  Luma, I choose to stay here until closure!  Your welfare is a side-effect!’

               Truly, this spirit was an entity that had divorced itself from the original Jennifer Hargreaves.

               ‘Let me guess.  “Closure” means that Eric Miller dies.  Is that what you want?’ asked Louis, not in any confrontational way, merely trying to clarify matters.

               ‘Yessss’ hissed the spirit, spitting sparks.  ‘My killer, dead.’

               That must be what Dave Hargreaves is working towards, realised Louis.  A vague idea took shape in his hindbrain, shades of Elizabethan revenger tragedies.

               ‘How about – try this on for size.  I get within physical contact range of Eric Miller, and touch him.  Probably with both hands around his neck squeezing as hard as possible.  That allows him to see you.’

               The spirit perked up and lost her frantically sizzling aura.

               ‘Oooh, yes, that would do it!  Let me go and see Marjory, I’ll ask her what comes next.’

               ‘Hang on, hang on.  You need to ask her how a spirit can become visible to people without second sight, and for long stretches of time.’

               ‘Oh-kay.  Alright.  See you soon.’    The spirit vanished off the settee, once again after having shifted the photograph of Jackie around.

     This is, of course, HUGELY unwise, because vengeance is reserved for a certain deity.  What can possibly go wrong?

I say!  Blue skies aloft!  Conrad bets it's cold outside.  There is a distinct danger of a dog walk in the near future, with the weather this bright and breezy.

"Between" Two States

Hmmmm.  So, in the small township of Pretty Lake, corralled inside a Lethal Death Zone, we have people in one of two states: under 21 and alive, or over 21 and dead.  The mystery plague appears to be hard-wired to become effective when a person's body clock hits 22, because one character did that and immediately died.

The cast keeps shrinking!

     The Evil Canuckistanian* Government is serious about their killer quarantine, too, instantly shooting down a light aircraft that attempted to fly over the LDZ.  Guys, the clock is ticking on this one, you'd better come up with a solution soon!  After three weeks of quarantine only a fifth of the population is left.  Those are not good statistics.

Finally -

Well, we only need a short article to hit the Compositional Ton, so - let's look at an uranium mine, shall we?  Because some of you are going to be working in one when I take over.  Art!

     Aha.  I see.  Rather grim-looking, isn't it?  Art!

     Those trucks look as if they're hand-propelled.  Toxic AND heavy work!  Art!

     Look at all that safety gear that you WON'T have.  A loincloth and sandals, that's all you'll be getting.  A rather larger loincloth for the ladies.  First person to complain gets sent to the organ banks!

*  The series is set in British America, in case you were wondering.  And even if you weren't.

The Cuckoos Of Midwich

That Sounds Like A Charming Little Wildlife Photography Book

Doesn't it, though?  WELL IT ISN'T!  I refer, of course - obviously! - to the novel by John Wyndham, "The Midwich Cuckoos".

     I was brought to ponder on this work because I'm watching the first season of a Netflix drama called "Between", which I shall describe.  You have the town of Pretty Lake in British America, population about 10,000.  Suddenly all the older folks start dropping dead, gurgling horrid black glop as they do so, until everyone over the age of 21 is dead.  Art!

     Then comes the frankly unbelievable part, where the British American government cuts the whole town off with electrified fences and razor wire and the use of deadly force at the merest whiff of a hat descending.  I mean come on!  This is Canuckistan we're talking about, they're much too polite to do that.  So you have a community totally isolated from the outside world and a mysterious threat.

     "Hmmmm, that reminds me of The Midwich Cuckoos," I mused aloud (no passers-by to scare this time).  Since you may not have read the novel yet seen the film, here is the 1960 iteration.  Art!

Behold the - er - Twine Of Doom!

     John The Carpenter did a remake in 1995, taking a break from his usual routine of terrifying documentaries.  Art!

     The novel's plot is that the village of Midwich undergoes An Event, where everyone inside a circle that extends to it's village limit falls unconscious.  If removed from within this circle they regain consciousness.  An overflight by the Brylcreem Boys reveals a mysterious metal object at absolute dead centre of the affected area.  When this OBVIOUSLY NOT A FLYING SAUCER vanishes, so does the effect.  All's well that ends well, hmmmm?  Er - no.  Because every fertile woman able to bear a child is now pregnant, and the children are as above ...

     That idea about a community totally cut off from the wider world had resonance, because it crops up in sci-fi time and again.  In "The Daemons" serial of the BBC's premier dramamentary 'Doctor Who', the village of Devil's End (foreshadowing!) is cut off by an invisible barrier that chars anything crossing it into ashes in a split second.  Art!

"No, I can't jump over it, Brigadier, it's a mile high."

     Then there's "Under The Dome", a novel by Stephen King which was made into an extremely successful television series, where - surprise! - a giant and impenetrable dome suddenly cuts off Chester's Mill.  Your Humble Scribe has neither seen the series nor read the book, so no spoilers here.  I'm pretty sure James Blish wrote a short story about an impenetrable black dome sealing off New York, which is of course - obviously! - a dirty trick played by the Sinisters.  Ah!  Found it - "The Box".

     And wouldn't you know it, these things that go around come around, apparently there's a television series of "The Midwich Cuckoos" due out later this year.  Art!

Don't ask me, I have no idea either

     Lest you be unaware, the cuckoo is a brood parasite that lays it's eggs in the nests of other birds, leaving them to be raised by the hapless parents, so not the kind of guest that you'd take home to mother.

Conrad Is ANGRY!  O SO ANGRY!!

Where was I?  O yes, my Frothing Nitric Ire was boiling over, wasn't it?  Yet more despicable envelope-stretching by those Dog Buns Codeword compilers AGAIN.  Still, it would be harder to create the blog if they weren't such moral weevils, wouldn't it?

"DULCIFY": You what?  I have no idea what this means.  Let me consult my trusty Collins Concise -

     - Nope.  Nothing.  Although it does say that DULCET comes from the Latin <hack spit> 'dulcis' meaning sweet.  Let us check teh Interwebz.  Ah.  "To sweeten or soothe" WHICH IS THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF HOW I FEEL RIGHT NOW!

<slobbers wantingly>

"HYDRIC": Yes yes yes I had to look this one up, too.  "Of or containing hydrogen".  WHAT ARE WE CHEMISTRY GRADUATES NOW!

CAUTION! contains hydrogen

"DEWBERRY": Go on, admit it, you'd never heard of it either, had you?  This is a variety of trailing bramble that produces a fruit looking like a black raspberry, and is similar to the blackberry.  That's it.  Art!

     I remain, Yours, Seething

So I Shall Inflict Torment Upon You

Yes, this will make you feel worse, but I shall feel better, which is the important thing.  Don't forget, "Tormentor" is not the light and fluffy nonsense about tanks, atom bombs and zombies that are BOOJUM!'s usual staples.

‘What if we do write swearing?’ asked a student, grinning and nodding to his friends alongside.

               ‘I know where you live.  I’ll come and pin you to your bed with a steak-knife after setting your house alight.  One hundred words minimum.’

               None of the students could make out if he was joking or not, which mattered not one iota to Louis.  He hardly considered any of the remedials capable, let alone willing, of making a complaint.  They came from a “thou shalt not grass” culture that viewed any resort to Authority as being underhand.

               Louis could have dashed off a one-hundred word report in one hundred seconds.  His class took between ten minutes and half an hour to come up with an end result.  By that time several students were fidgeting restlessly, so he gathered the essays in and allowed them to go early.

               ‘If you have time, say a prayer for the schoolgirl who was murdered,’ he told them on the way out.

               ‘You are so full of it,’muttered the hoodie-clad midget teen in passing.

               ‘Goodness and wit, or a similar rhyme,’ riposted Louis.

 SIX

 

Rowell asked a student mentor to go and collect Louis from the boxy shared office he was marking files in.  When the lecturer appeared in his airy, light-filled office, the Vice Principal folded his hands together and smiled, in the fashion of a shark.

               ‘Louis.  Please take a seat.’

               ‘That’s too polite.  What are you imposing on me?’

               ‘Imposing?  Nothing at all.  No, no, I’m just impressed at your ability to tutor the students on your DTO class.  A sound grasp of innovative and basic English tuition.  Plus they’re dwindling nicely.’

               ‘You want me to mentor that new girlie who arrived this week.’

               Rowell had enough integrity and conscience to blush.

               ‘Ah – er – yes.  Laura.  Not to put too fine a point upon it.  You know how it is.’

               ‘No,’ replied Louis, bluntly.  ‘I don’t.’

               ‘Oh, really.  The college needs to keep up academic performance measured across targets, and we’re down on the English side.  Your input will balance any possible drop in pass rates against the savings overall in terms of aggregate wages.  Plus, you’ve got the necessary supervisor quals – is it ISO or the NVQ?  Whichever.  And you have the time in your rota.’

               ‘Do I get a pay raise out of this?’ asked Louis, feeling daring.  To his surprise, Rowell didn’t immediately dismiss the idea, which meant it was already in the offing.

               Then again, do I really need money when I can speak to the spirits?

               ‘Get the Bursar’s office to send me the details.’

Finally -

We've actually hit the Compositional Ton, but you know how I like to pontificate.  Well, yesteryon Shelli Messaged me, which was coincidental, as I'd been thinking about her owing me a painting and me owing her money.  She is hectically busy with the February launch of her band's first CD, said band being Matt Hartless And The Maverick Seven.  This has been in the offing for some time, with the Coronavirus mucking up schedules.  So no painting until February.  Art!

How To Make Jam

First, You Need Fruit

Let's choose a nice low-hanging one: First Bus.  Then you SMASH IT VIOLENTLY WITH A HAMMER, before putting it in a pan with boiling water, and boiling and boiling and boiling it before mashing it through a sieve WITH AS MUCH FORCE AS POSSIBLE and then imprisoning it in a jar.  Forever.  There was something about sugar which I'm going to ignore because diabetes.  Art!

What's wrong with this picture?

     Yesterday Conrad took a constitutional stroll into Royton, or Babylon-Lite as we love to call it, in order to 1) get some steps in and 2) do a bit of shopping.  You know, those garlic-scented bin liners.  Then it was back to the bus stop, gloating at the fact that buses on a weekday are a lot more frequent than at the weekend.  Yeah, right.  The 14:58 didn't turn up.

     "Yeah, right.  First Bus, what can you expect?" I mused.  Silently, there were passers-by.  The 15:03 didn't turn up, either.  Nor did the 15:08.  I think they have extra services at these times to accommodate schools finishing around this time.  The 15:18 didn't turn up, either, at which Your Humble Scribe realised that not only were there no 409s en route to Rochdale, there hadn't been the usual mocking two or three en route to Ashton going in the opposite direction (I have codified this as a rule).  It was obvious what had occurred: Rochdale and Ashton had been over-run by the zombie hordes.  Art!

Rochdale Town Hall Resident's Association Meeting turns violent

     The First Bus drivers doubtless got away without harm, because zombies inevitably go for brains.

     ANYWAY at 15:20 Conrad gave up and walked home, meaning that I arrived at The Mansion with freezing hands yet sweating buckets beneath my coat (and the scarf Darling Daughter knitted for me).  Art!

View from a hill*

     To cover their collective nethers, First Bus did have a warning note on their bus stop schedule about services being cancelled at short notice.  Conrad maliciously thought up a better version:

     "FIRST BUS WILL SEND SOME BUSES OUT AT RANDOM TIMES DURING THE DAY IF WE FEEL LIKE IT WHEN WE ROLL A DOUBLE SIX ON A PAIR OF DICE"

     There you go, fixed it for you.

     It took a good twenty minutes to walk home, during which time the roads were entirely untroubled by First Bus in either direction.  Though I was expecting the zombie horde to arrive at some point.

     ANYWAY the resolution when I got into my Sekrit Layr was simple enough: First Bus drivers were on strike Monday and Wednesday of this week.  Damn.  I was looking forward to putting my Zombie Survival Skills into practice.

     What we need, motley, is a weapon that will kill quietly and at arm's length, like a pole-axe, possibly even something with greater reach ...

Speaking Of Which

That bonkers genius Colin Furze was at it last year, creating a modern trebuchet, which, if you recall, is the font name we originally used in BOOJUM! which went potty when they re-jigged Blogger and changed into Times.  This is Times: Times. which we use for captions.  This is Trebuchet: Trebuchet.

     ANYWAY back to his enormous and impressive trebuchet.  Art!

     You can judge how big this thing is by the size of the JCB next to it.  Ol' Col had reinforced the sling, allowing a great big metal ingot to be hurled with lethal force over 250 yards.  Instead of a flimsy wall made of pallets as a target, on this the second day they were using cars and a caravan.  Make not mistake, this thing is lethal and even a glancing blow from the ingot would turn you into jam.  Art!

Up -

 - and away

Impact!

     In fact it took a good few attempts to obtain a hit.  When that ingot impacted the car, it gave the engine a real wallop.  Not satisfied with hitting a car, Ol' Col decided that he would car a hit.  Art!

     They've removed the engine, yet that's still a whole car.  Even if it is a small one - the larger blue car simply didn't fit when they tried to sling it, the counterweight crushed it and the engine flew out.  Art!

The wonder of flight

     After a punishing two-day regimen of checking and slinging, finally there was a bearing failure and the counterweight fell off, fortunately not whilst anyone was on the platform.  Art!

     Ah well, onward and upward.

More "Tormentor"?  Well, Since You Insist

I did notice just now that I've stopped putting in a warning about how definitely darker this work is than the usual fluffy nonsense you read here.  If you've been reading it then you'd probably have realised this by now, and don't expect a comedy pun routine.  Without further ado -

‘Don’t mention another word!’ he barked.  ‘I tutored her.  Anyone who wants to fly down the stairs without touching them can make a comment now.’

               Jen’s help in class had dwindled to watching for hidden weapons that the students might have brought in past the security personnel and sensor equipment, before deciding not to come at all. As for Louis, his unbridled passion convinced the remaining students that picking on their strange, not to mention potentially violent tutor, ought to be left well alone.

               One of the students, greatly daring, raised a hand.

               ‘Yes?’ asked Louis, almost being polite.

               ‘Er – just telling, sir, that any nonce who ends up in prison for a crime like that, he’s got to be kept in solitary for his own safety.  All the other cons will chop his ******** off given half a chance.  They’ll throw him off balconies and stairwells, or put broken razors in his stew.’

               Louis rubbed his hands in what was only partly-exaggerated glee.

               ‘Good, good!  What a prospect, eh?  Twenty five years looking at the same walls.’  He promptly stopped gloating and pointed at a student.  ‘What’s going to stop you ending up like that?’

               ‘Me?’ squeaked the hoodie-clad teen.  ‘I’m not going to murder anyone!’

               Louis adopted a holier-than-thou attitude.

‘If you leave here able to count, then tot up all the time you spend inside.  Years.  Decades.  You will end up serving a life sentence, only spread out a bit.’

               He pointed to another teen, busily engaged in scrawling graffiti on his own hand – Jen would have intervened if the students wrote on desks.

               ‘What a shame you don’t show such application to the written work on the course.’

               The teen returned a dead, wall-eyed stare.

               ‘Okay.  I want you all to write a one hundred word report on what you read in the paper.  Avoid swearing, please, since this will form part of the report I send to college admin.’

     There you have it, raw drama in the making.

A New Crossword Jigsaw

It is just me who makes that mistake, isn't it?  I think it's because I do so many of the Dog Buns things, my mind runs along those lines by constant reinforcement.  Anyway, Art!

     It's only 250 pieces so not that difficult, except I've never done a circular jigsaw before, so perhaps I shouldn't judge it beforehand.  I discovered this morning, as an example, that Skimmed Milk functions differently than Semi-Skimmed when making porridge in the microwave.  It marched out of the tub.  That'll teach me, hmmmm?

     And with that, we are done.  Ever so done!

*  Chameleons in-joke for you there

The Crystal Place

As You Should Surely Know By Now

Conrad knows little about the ballfoot game, and can barely tell one end of a football from the other, which doesn't stop him from enjoying the delicious schadenfreude of 'Have Your Say' on the BBC's sports webpages.  O my! the invective and venom that spills over is awesome to behold and extremely funny, if you don't have a dog in the fight.  Art!

Vostok Adin

     Continuing an aside with spherical objects, that's Vostok One with Yuri Gagarin aboard, because the ballfoot game is boring.

     ANYWAY there was a match between The Crystal Place, which sounds more like a jewellery shop than a ballfoot team, and Loverpool, who sound too risque and overly friendly to Your Humble Scribe.  One team won, can't remember who - hang on, hang on, can't let BOOJUM!'s legendary truthfulness and accuracy* get besmirched - ah it was Laverpool.  Got that?  The Comments were, to a large extent, concerned with the referee.  Art!

More Vostok

     Because referees are just as boring as ballfoot.  The referee, in case you were unaware, is a match official whose responsibility it is to be equally reviled by both teams and their supporters.  He runs up and down the pitch because a moving target is harder to hit, and he interferes in the game to keep passions roused (I think).  Typically there are any number of conspiracy theories about referees and their bias, which we won't go into here**.  One of the commenters came up with an hilarious jibe.  Art - no Vostok this time, please.

     
     What Conrad is waiting for is a match where The Manchester United are on one side, and lose, because then there are THOUSANDS of Comments, mostly fans of other teams gloating madly.  Yes, this makes me a terrible person and no, I don't care.

     O as another aside, I think I'll ban ballfoot completely when I take over.  Or have the result decided by tossing a coin.  And - let's see - the players will have to pay to be in a team.  And <thinks hard> all the players and managers and staff from teams that get relegated will go to the uranium mines.  Oooh, got another - a red card means an immediate trip to be divvied up into the organ banks.  And and and - cor blimey I can't ban it, can I, this is all far too entertaining! - the referee will be armed, probably with Colin Furze's Thermite Cannon, and any foul will be rewarded with instant immolation -

There's a pair for the morgue right away

     I wonder how Colin's doing?

     Hmmm.  I don't know why this chap is still alive.

Montana Tonka Moniker

I put that in because you shouldn't imagine this is a typo about Tonga -

     Here an aside.  They have cleared the airport runway of ash and planes are now arriving with aid, and the Ockers and Polite Australians have been air-dropping supplies, too.  Things are still bad but getting better.

     ANYWAY Conrad was idly musing "Whatever happened to Tonka Toys?" because I do a lot of musing.  Your Humble Scribe is unsure if you're familiar with the brand, so I shall explicate.  They were known for making metal toys, usually heavy industrial plant, that were extremely robust because they used steel, not tin.  Art!

No plastic shizzle here!

     Where does their odd name come from?  Partly from Sioux - 'Tanka' in Sioux means 'big', and these were not diecast toys you could comfortably fit in a pocket.  Art!

With puny human for scale

     Their original logo also featured waves, because what geographical feature was nearby?  Why none other than Lake Winnetonka.  Art!

Lake

Logo

     Of course - obviously! - you want to know where Montana comes in, if the company was based in Minnesota?  Because there's a museum in the Montana town of Winifred, logically known as the Winifred Museum, that houses a collection of Tonka Toys.  Three thousand of 'em.  They were gifted to the museum from a collector who had acquired five thousand of them, at which point one presumes the wife said 'It's them or me.'  Art!

     Now we are all better-educated than we were five minutes ago.

From Tonka To Torment

Yup another instalment of "Tormentor"

Having missed the verdict, Louis rapidly booted up his computer and checked the local BBC news.

               “Violent Sex Offender Sentenced to Life” read the headlines.  “Eric Miller, a.k.a. Eric Murdoch, a.k.a. Elvis Miller, had a history of violent sexual offences against women, dating back to his first offence at the age of fifteen.  Miller, aged 25, stood impassively in the dock as he was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for the brutal murder of schoolgirl Jennifer Hargreaves, aged 15.”

               A photograph of Miller had been added to the page, revealing a cocky, arrogant face topped with blond spiked hair that had gone out of style in the previous decade.

               ‘*******,’ muttered Louis.  ‘You’ll get it in the neck, matey, I promise.’

 

               The remedial English class now numbered ten.  Another departee was in hospital, having been “jumped” by a rival gang and given an involuntary approximate appendectomy.

               Louis gave the class copies of the local newspaper to read, asking them to go over different pages and report back to him about what they saw.  The idea was to acquaint them with conversational English in written form.  Louis’s opinion of the local journalists amounted to “able to write for the lowest common denominator”, which ought to be pushing the envelope for his beloved troglodytes.

               ‘That fu – er, that perv who killed that schoolie’s in here,’ announced one student, that midget in the hoodie who left the classroom with a profound comment at each lesson.

               Louis’s head came up like a shot, and he pointed to the student.

     This may still end well for the troglodytes, IF they can keep their mouths shut, because Luma is not a man to mix it with.

Another Dangerous Lighthouse!

I like this subject, as you can tell.  Today we look at the unpronouncable Waugoshance lighthouse on Lake Michigan, which was built in 1850.  Art!

     It's looking a little the worse for wear, admittedly.  It went out of service in 1912, when two other lighthouses of better quality construction and utility made it obsolete.  During the Second Unpleasantness it was used for bombing practice, as a result of which everything wooden was consumed by flames.  The waves in this part of Lake Michigan are especially severe, as are the frequent storms, and the 'crib' the lighthouse sits upon has been extensively eroded.  People who tried to save and renovate it gave up, as the costs would have been north of £200,000 just to stabilise the crib.  So at some point soon the whole thing will collapse.  Wicked!

In better days

Finally -

"GARLIC BINBAGS" it says on the Shopping Notice slate near the back door.  Conrad, of course, couldn't help but wonder if there's a market for scented bin bags, and if ever Asda or Tesco start selling them, I want royalties.

     Well, there we have it, hit the Compositional Ton, and I need a shave, so that's it for today to date.  Pip pip!

*  This is a lie! <the hideous truth courtesy Mister Hand>

**  Not today.