JFK's Other Nightmare -

That Is, If -
He had grown up in Florida and the cook wasn't a local.  So, yes, by "nightmare" I mean a stretch of impossible circumstances that never happened in the real world.  Which does not an attractive blog title make.
     Before that, let us return to the Bloodroot, or Sanguinia Canadensis, which I had mentioned (but not touched) earlier today.  Art?
          
                   The deceptively attractive exterior                                      The hidden truth
     This plant's flowers, leaves, stem and roots are all poisonous.  Not just poisonous, but the sap it produces will attack your flesh and eat it away in a manner akin to gangrene, or necrotising fasciitis.  Said sap is scarlet in colour and resembles human go-juice, hence the name "Bloodroot".  About the only thing it's good for is making a red dye, though if you get it wrong then you will die, indeed.
     Back to that title, and the Manchineel Tree.  I am grateful to Kyle (of "Because Science" Youtube channel) for bringing this item of flora to my attention, because I'd never heard of it before, and you know Conrad - he does like him some poisons.  Art?

Yes, those are warning signs

     One wonders how this tree evolved, since every bit of it is poisonous: it probably holds pride of place amongst Plants You Do Not Mess With.  It will cause your skin to blister if you merely touch the bark.  If the sap gets in your eyes, you go blind.  If you burn it and the smoke gets in your eyes, you go blind.  If you eat the fruit you will experience an hideous and increasing burning pain in your digestive tract.  Then you die.  Basically it is poison in tree form, and not all the various poisons have been identified, because researchers like to stay alive.  Art?

The Manchineel Death Apple

     Allegedly, the fruit is nice and sweet when first eaten, until your insides catch fire, which brings me back to tonight's title.  What if Cook went out and picked a few Death Apples to make that most South Canadian of dishes, apple pie?  It is uncertain if pureeing the fruit on a hob, or baking it in an oven, would destroy the toxins present, so young John would quiver with fear at the mere sight of an apple pie.
     If <long train of unlikely events redacted from 5 sides of A4 by Mister Hand> by the cyanide present in normal apple seeds!

JFK, for the young and uninformed amongst ye.

     Okay, motley, you're in the middle of the swimming pool, naked.  This container of one metric tonne capacity, which we are about to add to the pool, is full of snapping turtles.  Good luck getting to the - sorry, what's that?  
     Oh.  Really?
     So sorry, motley, apparently the pet emporium were having a sale on Box Jellyfish.  Yes, the ones with the most excruciatingly painful sting in the world.  At least they don't bite!

Better box clever ...

Making A Mess - With MS
No!  Nothing to do with a manuscript, multiple sclerosis nor Marks and Spencers either.
     I came across an interesting blog called "Overlord's Blog" whilst searching for information about the British-crewed Panther "Cuckoo", and have subsequently followed up on this initial contact.  "Listy", as the owner calls himself, ferrets around in unusual corners of military technology and reports back on same.

http://overlord-wot.blogspot.com/

     That's the link, lest you wish to visit the site yourself.  In a recent blog he mentioned converting Perfidious Albion's Bren Gun Carrier from the flamethrowing version, dubbed a "Wasp", to one that sprayed chemical warfare agents.  Art?

Technically, a Universal Carrier

     The BGC was produced in enormous numbers during the Second Unpleasantness, being a kind of tracked-Jack-of-all-trades.  Whereas other armies use light trucks or heavy cars or half-tracks or horses (Germany especially), Perfidious Albion preferred their two-ton tracked tow-truck. The Wasp variant was one of the more horrid species of weapons that this nation developed, being designed to roast the opposition to death.  Art?
         

     The conversion to spraying chemicals was tested in 1944, using a compound known only as "MS", which was used on a test bunker.  This hellish gas would have rendered everyone inside the bunker dead within quarter of an hour, even if they were wearing gas masks.  Sobering enough, but - we are dealing with Perfidious Albion here, and clearly MS wasn't horrid enough, so they did a second series of Wasp tests, where Hydrocyanic Acid (!) was used.  This would have killed everyone in the test bunker in seconds, regardless of them wearing gas masks or not, and the contamination remained lethal for a whole day afterwards.
     Perfidious Albion: clearly amongst those countries you Do Not Want To Mess With.

     This has all been rather grim, hasn't it?  Toxins and poisons and death and death apples.  Let us now change the subject, to <thinks> Global Thermonuclear War! Sorry, slip of the keyboard - 

Ded Moroz!
O do stop whining!  No, this is nothing about The Walking or Night of the Living or Can Dance.  It's Russian for "Grandfather Frost" I'll have you know.  Art?

Ded and loving it

     O'er there where the snows get deep and the vodka bottle gets emptier, Ded Moroz and Snegurochka go out on New Year's Eve (Christmas Eve not being a big event in Ruffia) and deliver presents to well-behaved children.  Sneg is Ded's grandaughter, and is a comely maiden, which is a pleasant contrast to Schwartze Pieter over here in the West.  I know whom I'd prefer a present from.
     Ol' Ded is also another crack in the facade that the Ruffians try to project westwards, of being all hard and shizzle, because they are fantastic softies when it comes to this chap.  He even has an official residence at Veliky Ustyug, which receives literally millions of letters and has been graciously visited by Tsar Putin.  Wise move, Dimya; you definitely want Ol' Ded onside.  Art?

I don't know what's going on here, but it scares me.

    As we tug the motley out of the pool to dunk it in a bath of vinegar - staple cure for box jellyfish stings - let us now hold hands and humbly request that Thomas Pynchon gets a move on with his latest novel, Amen.