Traffic

I Shall Pre-empt You -
 - before you go rabbiting on about there being some ghastly wailing pop group of the same name, which strikes me as being wildly unlikely.
     No, today begins with Frothing Nitric Ire directed at a coagulation of traffic - not 'jam' as that simply isn't descriptive enough - which greeted your humble scribe as he stood at the bus stop this ante meridian.  I may be able to append a photograph if Art is sufficiently conscious -

A bit wobbly because I was QUIVERING WITH RAGE!
Not cold.

     This is not good.  The traffic lights where there are road-works are half a mile down from the bus stop, and it would have been far quicker to walk than remain on the bus.
     How I fumed!
     And the road-works that sabotaged my trip in are only a few yards long, which is rubbing lemon and salt into the wound, because -

     - except what's this?  Another set of Dog Buns road-works before we get to the middle of Royton? 
     I'm fuming even more now!

Fuming as much as this

     The torment didn't stop there.  Oh no.  Hermes, the Greek god of transport, has long had a dislike for smarmy alien spies in human disguise, because - Surprise! - here's a third set of road-works, necessitating a long detour via Stockholm, Moscow and Warsaw.*
     Terminal fuming commences.

Now fuming like this

     And, what's more, all this is before the weeks-long closure of the crossroads in Royton, which Conrad looks forward to with sinister foreboding.  First Bus are bad enough when the roads are open; quite what the collective numptiness will do after February 10th is a matter of speculative horror.
     But enough of me.  Let the blog begin!**

In Range
Yes, we are back to Ian and Karl pretending to stab, club and beat the tar out of each other.  We have mentioned already why the rifle-with-bayonet was little used as a trench weapon, and that various improvised Blunt Instruments were used instead. 
     The acme of trench weapons, however, was agreed by both to be the humble entrenching tool.  Art?

Here, we call a spade an entrenching tool

     This handy device enables you to dig holes, which is what the designers intended.  If one edge is sharpened, however, it makes a horribly efficient chopping weapon, which is probably design creep that was overlooked.  Not only that, it can be used to deflect other Blunt (or Bladed) Instruments wielded by chaps with hostile intent.
     To confirm this, recall if you will that paragraph in "All Quiet On The Western Front" where one veteran lauds the combat value of the sharpened shovel.
     There.  I think I've worked off some of that Frothing Nitric Ire.***
    
Isinglass
I know what you're thinking - not literally, that DARPA mind-reading helmet is still only a prototype - "Oho, this sounds like a riff on something Tolkein-esque, as in that meme about 'They're taking the hobbits to Isengard, by Jove."
      Well you're wrong.  This is about fish.  No, not sharks, just fish.  Sharks, you see, don't have a swim bladder, which is a source of much sorrow to those I have canvassed about it.
     Anyway, back to fish.  Isinglass is made from processed swim bladders, and was used in early automobiles for side windows, as it is translucent.  Art?

Thus

     The Ruffians had originally cornered the market in isinglass, because it used to be made exclusively from sturgeon swim bladders.  Then a canny Scotsman discovered a way to make isinglass from the cod's swim bladder.  Ha!  Take that, Ruffians!
     Also -

Hold on to hats -

      They put it in beer to clear it out, rendering it gloriously transparent.

It's Because -
Back to sharks.  I thought I'd cover this as it concerns the behaviour of the shark, and you need to put all those hasty stereotypical biases aside. 
     "Hark at the shark, prowling ceaselessly in the ocean depths, always on the hunt for a bit of swimming scoff," I hear you say, which is a bit of a relief, you've been very quiet all through the rest of the blog and I was starting to worry.

Hmmm.  Conrad is unsure.

      Actually, no.  The shark has no swim bladder and thus lacks buoyancy, meaning that if it were to stop swimming, it would sink.  It would sink in a voyage to the bottom of the sea - you know, that's quite a catchy phrase, perhaps I can use it in another setting -

Ah.  Perhaps not.

     Now that we're at the end of the blog, and the motley has relaxed, it's time to shoot it out of a cannon!^


*  Although not strictly true, this is how it felt.
**  BOOJUM! - the very definition of speculative horror to be viewed with sinister foreboding
***  But not all of it.  Be cautious.
^  A low-velocity one.  Comparatively safe.