Again, On The Scene -

With A Mangosteen!
Gotcha - you were expecting this to be about N.C.I.S. or H.M.S. Upholder or the evolution of Torpedo Boat Destroyers, weren't you?  Or at the very least something about submarines.  Well, never one to disappoint my audience, let us take a look at more Irwin Allen underwater shenanigans.  You have, if you read earlier blogs this week, seen pictures of his recycled opus "City Beneath The Sea", which re-used props and sets from other of his television series; Ol' Ir was a believer in squeezing: a dollar out of a dime/a pound out of penny/an actor's throat till they agreed to work for scale (delete where applicable).  Art?

City Beneath the Sea!
(Or all the vacuum tubes and valves from a Fifties television set)

     As I said, previous television programs, which include that eternal classic "Voyage To The Bottom of the Sea".  Great theme tune, chaps.  Conrad wonders how slowly the 'Seaview' submarine travelled, since it seemed to take years to get to the bottom of the briny.  Since I mentioned submarines, let Art illustrate the 'Seaview' <sounds of cattle-prod being charged>

One weird-looking submarine.

     But wait!  We're not done yet, for Ol' Ir also had the Flying Submarine, which deployed out of Seaview, before gaily disporting itself like a swallow across the heavens.  Art?

Step One

     And -

Conrad not entirely sure how it flew, exactly.*

     Well there you go, and I bet you hadn't even noticed that we'd changed the font today from Trebuchet to Helvetica, just to see what difference it made.  Not much, to be honest.
     Okay, I think it's time to tie the motley to the back of a (hungry) crocodile and see what fun evolves from there!

HMS Upholder a.k.a. P37

You Lucky People
I did state that you'd only get a picture of the maps that came with Volume II of "Official History of the War: Naval Operations" if you'd been good.
     Have you been good?  Or at least undetected in your malfeasance?  Very well then, you may view a picture or two.  Art!

     These are the separate maps for 'Home Waters' and 'Eastern Mediterranean' and I have to stand back at this distance to get both into shot, as they are whopping big things.  I doubt you get these with the 2007 Naval and Military Press reprints, eh?
     One more.  Art?

     The hunting and destruction of SMS Dresden, whom I bet you've never heard of.  Don't worry, neither have I.  
     Right, you may now go back to your malfeasing.  And don't get caught.

Pub Quiz Is Back!
That is, back at The Pleasant Inn, it's stamping fields of yore.  A new landlord and landlady have arrived, meaning that the quizmaster, Steve, has been able to run the quiz.  This your humble scribe discovered last night en route to The Summit, where they have a much larger clientele of much younger people in a much, much noisier environment.  Conrad was immediately the oldest person in the venue when he ventured across the threshold, whereas he is automatically the youngest at The Pleasant.  Art!  A picture for the readers.

The old fogey's refuge

     A small thing, but an enjoyable life is full of such.

A Mangosteen, because there'd be trouble if one failed to turn up

I May Have Mentioned This Before -
E'en if we are dabbling dangerously close to the turbid waters of Current Affairs, I think we can risk dipping a long, malformed, taloned toe in there.  I see the Beeb's website is reporting that dangerous 'selfie' activity has killed 259 people over the past 7 years, followed by a list of countries where such things mostly occur, and the most risky selfie activities: drowning, road accidents and falling from tall things.

CAUTION!  This is not a playground.

SURPRISE!  Neither is this.

Do I even have to say it?

     The researchers behind the Beeb's article numbers also assert that Death-by-Selfie is actually under-reported, which I can quite believe, since those killed by or in traffic are put down as road traffic fatalities.  Conrad cannot quite believe the number of people he has witnessed strolling ignorantly into traffic whilst utterly engrossed on their devil's digital device.  This is why "The Darwin Awards" will never run out of material.
     Or is there another explanation?

Well, yes, he could get away with it ...

*  It's in the script

On The Scene -

 - In A Submarine
And none of that jolly, happy, laughing Yellow submersible vessel, either - although your humble scribe does confess that he loves said animation to bits - for we are returning to the sinister subject of sea-going subterfuge and <thinks> skullduggery, embodied in -

I know, I know, I Atragon and on and on -

      From what your humble scribe can ascertain from trailers, IMDB and Wikipedia, this film concerns the eeevil underwater inhabitants of the lost continent of Mu, who have decided to get back at the dryfeet because of the rubbish name they've had inflicted upon them.  Oooh, get you, all hard done by - how do you think people from Hungary feel?
     Okay, the EUIOTLCOM build a super-submarine that seems to be called "Atragon", rather stealing a march on that crap film about dragons, because dragons cannot move underwater, whereas -

- Atragon can.

      "Pshaw!" I hear you scornfully announce.  "Yes, but dragons can fly."

     If that's so, I hope they filed a detailed and accurate flight plan, because - 

- so can Atragon!

     I see your facade of confidence beginning to falter somewhat, and allow me to pre-empt your assertion that, Hey, dragons can spit fire!
     Oh really?

Yeah, yeah, big deal.  So can Atragon.

     It can even tunnel through solid rock, except I can't find a picture to illustrate that, so you'll just have to take that on trust.  Come on, I have an honest face!
     All this technical expertise is not there just to wow the audience.  O no.  Atragon is going to blow shizzle up until the <checks earlier acronym> EUIOTLCOM take their rightful place as rulers of the planet.*  Quite how you do this with only a single super-submarine is unclear, because modern aviation/marine weapons systems are so complex and require so much maintenance that, of every three, only one is actually available for combat at a given moment.  One to ponder upon.

As a weapons platform, not quite stealthy enough.

     Now, time to strap the motley to a petrol-powered pogo stick and see how long it takes before vomiting ensues! 

Good lord!  I was joking about the pogo stick, you know ..

The Haul
As you should surely know, your humble scribe is now collecting the "Official History of the War: Naval Operations", and has laid his hot sweaty hands upon Volume II (that's "2" in Roman numerals, not "11", just to be clear), the text volume that doesn't have a matching map case to go with it.  Art?

     This is because it didn't need one - there are fold-out maps in the body of the book itself, as well as 5 large ones in pockets at both frontispiece and back cover.  If you are good then I shall gift you a picture of one.
N.C.I.S. And "Cover Story"
Ah, what can I say, but that this is indeed my guilty pleasure.  This season (Five, if you're counting) has been somewhat undermined by the inclusion of Tony's love interest: at a guess the actor Mr. Weatherly pestered the scriptwriters "to give my character some depth" because he wanted to extend his acting chops.  Art?

"I need emotional depth.  Depth, I tell you!"

     Which has nothing to do with the episode I watched last night, "Cover Story", so if you don't want to catch SPOILERS for an episode that came out 7 years ago, LOOK AWAY NOW.

Look away, look away - is there a song in there somewhere?

     The plot was pretty weak, I have to say: someone had been reading McGee's first draft of his second novel, and killing people because - er - I might have missed the reason for that.  Because the villain is a nutjob?**  Or, everyone's a critic.
     The murder weapon was quite out there, too.  A javelin.
     Wait, what?

A tad overkilly

     No, although you might be forgiven for thinking that.  No, they mean the long pointy thing that generally gets propelled through the air by muscle power.  Art?

Yeah, one of those

     It's never explained exactly how the villain managed to javelin two people to death; a five-foot wooden pole with a metal spike on the end is rather cumbersome, don't you think?  Our nutter must have thought so, too, as his final murder attempt is made with a revolver.

More Of Lasers -
I was going to mention gamma-ray lasers at length, but I think I've already covered them in a long-previous post, as I seem to recall that there are a tremendous number of technical problems to overcome before you can effectively fry your enemies alive at a distance of 3,000 miles.

A theoretical model of X-ray lasers in action***.

     Okay, then, what about X-ray lasers?  Which led to a long read of an article about 'Project Excalibur', which itself concerned orbital nuclear warheads equipped with lasing rods; detonate the warhead and a focussed pulse of X-rays went whizzing down the rod.
     "Great for ballistic missile defence!" shouted Edward Teller in his Mittel European Scientist accent.  "Give me £1 billion and I'll build them by next Tuesday!"

Ed.  Tellin' it like it is.

     Ed was a little premature.  After something like £750 million in research and testing, the lasing just wasn't happening, so Proj E. got dumped. 
     Still, at least it inspired a British band - 

Available for weddings, christenings, bar mitzvahs and shooting down SS22 nuclear missiles.

     And after that apocalyptic note, it's time to wave goodbye, mount up on our trusty wyvern-wagon and head off into the glowing sunset. 


*  They will, of course, only be keeping the seat warm for me.
**  Good enough.
***  This may not be completely accurate.