That's Me Told Then

For Lo! We Are Back To "2001"

Yes, AGAIN AGAIN.  If you are unhappy with this THEN THE EXIT DOOR IS THAT WAY. 

    Conrad possesses a particularly pleasing book about the making of the film, "2001 Filming The Future" by Piers Bizony, which has lots of inside details about how and why it got made, including a lot of cool production design illustrations, as below.  Art!

This is the Pan American "Space Clipper", a variety of spaceplane.  It darts around in space to the strains of "The Blue Danube" before docking with the space station (you can see an early iteration of same at top).  Once again Conrad is going to use that Snip function.  Art!

     How did they manage that?  The pen floats about freely, however it must be on wires, yet I can't see any even when peering at the screen from an inch away.  I may have to re-read 2FTF to see if they explain it away in there.  Art!

     This shot shows the balletic approach of the spaceplane, which led Conrad to ask another question nobody else has: how does this craft launch?  We know it must be from ground-level on Earth because of the wings and general aerodynamic design.  If launched vertically then it would need a special vertical assembly structure to hold it in place; but if so then how would it land?

     If it took off like a conventional plane, then where is the undercarriage? - because those wings are far too narrow to house anything able to support it.  Yes, the undercarriage and wheels may be accommodated beneath the fuselage, which will have to remain a supposition as we never get a view of it's underside.

     O - allow me to show what attention to detail was observed here in the docking sequence.  Art!

     The same instrument panel under different illumination as the Space Clipper gets closer to the space station and reflected light becomes an issue.

     Going back to our first picture, if Art can duplicate it - 

     The rear portion of the clipper is a jettisonable booster, which would have been used to loft it into orbit.  No such assist is required to descend into a gravity well, so one presumes it would have been separated when the clipper reached a relatively low level, slowed by a retardant parachute.  Why low level?  Because then it won't fall on the head of a hapless passerby and inflict a concussion.

     ANYWAY none of that has anything to do with today's title.  You should recall that, yesteryon, I was yarking on about the (implied) weapons systems featured shortly before we see the spaceplane, and boldly declared that the very first one we see is a kind of orbiting headquarters.

     WRONG!  Art?

     That's me told, then.

     Motley, it's time to play Bombe Surprise - I'll be the Bomber and you'll most definitely get a surprise.

     O!  I say - let me check and see what Picture options I have to load from -

     <sigh> you may remember me going on about the high school hackers of Corona Del Mar, a news story I tracked down from a Reddit thread on Youtube, yet which I could not find a photo to back up with?

     I turns out I never uploaded the screenshot to my laptop.  A very senior moment.  Art!

     I wasn't even looking under the correct title for the Youtube post, so heaven knows if I'd ever have found it, if I hadn't been doing a little picture admin on my phone.  "Spoiled Kids Getting Owned", hmmm, "What Was The 'Incident' At Your School" was on the right lines.

     Conrad: a day late and 60p short.

BOOJUM! Reviews Films

In our own inimitable style, not that Mark Kermode would ever be tempted to imitate it.  Should you feel the aching desire for a real film review, go see his.  Meanwhile, allow me to clarify how we review films: 1) we go off the title  2) we make huge assumptions and 3) we reserve the right to abruptly change any or all of this at a moment's notice.  I only like doing these in threes and it's taken at least a week to discover three new cinema bus posters.  Let the roasting begin!

"Free Guy": A wildly ambiguous title, methinks.  In the future there will be a super drug of choice, and you won't have to pay for it?  Or, Madonna's ex is in prison on trumped-up charges, let's sort out a campaign to free him?  Documentary on Paul Kossoff?  South Canadian dramatic take on Today's Man?

"Right, we've hired The Stathe to break Neil out of Wormwood Scrubs ...*"

"Jungle Cruise":  Okay, taking a riverine journey upstream, into triple-canopy foliage - what, is this a re-telling of "Apocalypse Now"?  No no don't tell me, it's a comedy action thriller with lovable The Rock playing a zany eccentric skipper who romances and charms stuffy upright Emily Blunt, the end.

"Emily had really buffed-up for her role."

"The Suicide Squad": Conrad was a little confused until he read a precis in "Empire" that explains this is a sequel of sorts to that film back in 2016.  Lots of new faces, obviously, because being a member of the SS means a rather slim chance of appearing in any sequels.  The idea of using criminal scum to do outrageously dangerous work certainly has appeal, and indeed provides a reason why Gotham doesn't simply 'vanish' supervillains when apprehended.  

Food for thought

     Thus we move from Marvel and film to IPC and comics, which means this review is at an end.  You may weep if you wish.

Conrad Is Thirsty!

I have the choice of a pint of flat beer, which is not an option as no alcohol consumption on a school night, or getting up off my idle behind and going downstairs for some water.  It's too late for another pot of tea, as it has strange effects on my getting to sleep (or not).  Nor do I want to use up my tonic water, as there were only a few bottles left on the shelves tonight when I did the weekly shop; clearly those logistics problems are having an impact if Conrad cannot have freshly-diced lemon and lime with his tonic water.  Note no mention of gin - horrid stuff!

*  Heck, I'd pay to see this as a film!

If I Were To Say "Barbed Wire"

Then I Know What Your Filthy Minds Would IMMEDIATELY Presume

One does not need a DARPA prototype Telepathy Helmet - which I did return, honestly - to predict what your fervid imaginations would conjure up.  Art!

About the most SFW I could find

     It is, by all accounts, a uniquely terrible film, which Your Humble Scribe has no intention of ever watching.  In fact, if you've ever seen "Casablanca" then you've already seen "Barb Wire".

     None of which has anything to do with Mister Glidden's Meisterwerk: barbed wire.  He invented this stuff in the later nineteenth century, where it became a cheap and very effective way to stop cattle a-wandering.  Art!

Moo-ve along, now

     It was also seized upon by armed forces around the world and had been used extensively prior to the First Unpleasantness, which is where it really came into it's own.  It would be used on removable frames, in coils, or strung between poles, or both.  Art!

     The Teutons, constitutionally on the defensive, used enormous amounts of this stuff during the years of trench warfare, with belts defending their Hindenburg Line being up to fifty yards deep.  'Twere well for attacking troops to avoid any tidy gaps in barbed wire defences, as they tended to channel towards pre-sited machine guns or pre-laid artillery.  Once up against uncut wire, it was a case of wire-cutters out and hack away, before you got picked off by the defenders, or the whole attack would bog down - which happened quite frequently.  Art!

     There had to be paths through the metal maze in order for patrols to get in and out of their trenches, which would be watched with all the attention of a mother hawk looking after her chicks.  If stretches of wire were damaged or destroyed then teams of soldiers got the unlovely job of re-wiring at night, knowing that the slightest sound would bring flares and gunfire.  Initially rubber mallets were used to knock posts into the earth, until Bright Spark Himself came up with the idea of screw-piquets, which - you may be ahead of me here - merely screwed silently into the ground, removing need for hammering.  Art!

     It was still dodgy work, as the opponents were known to lay machine-guns on damaged sectors of wire, reasoning that a working party would very probably be out there to repair it at night.

     One solution to barbed wire was the French graze-fuse, known in Perfidious Albion service as the "106" fuse, which resembled a cat with anxiety problems, in that it would go off at the slightest touch, regardless of where it was.  This meant shells would blast the wire apart into little pieces, instead of shovelling great mats of it atop other wire or coming to rest on the same spot as launched from.

     

     This is only a quick description of the subject.  We might come back to it again, as there's a lot of incremental detail omitted*.

     Motley!  Do you want a barbed-wire tattoo?  Tough luck, too expensive.  I've got a cheaper alternative for you - grit your teethly appendages ...

On The Horns Of A Triceratops

I thought that was appropriately abstruse <sits back feeling clever>.  As you should surely know by now, Conrad is never happier than when ranting furiously at the latest Codeword and how they continually push the envelope of fairness outwards in all directions.  Art!

     Those compilers may be a collection of chiselling weevils whom I doubt sleep soundly at night, you'll get no disagreement from me about that.  Er - on the other hand, as with the Codeword I completed last night, which was as innocuous as milk - there was nothing to complain about.  No blog content generated!  Except this item, you could argue.  Well, yes, but I can only write it once.

Back To "2001: A Space Odyssey"

Yes, AGAIN!  This is partly to test how my new laptop processes the 'Snip' function.

     Okay, so you remember the transition from falling bone to falling spaceship?  One of the most famous smash-cuts in cinema IF you don't know what I'm talking about.  The explanation about all the various satellites being orbital weapons platforms isn't explicit in the film (though it is in the novel), so I thought I'd examine a little closer.  Art!

     If I had to guess, I'd say this was a C3 (Command, Control and Communications) base, just going by the size of the aerials.  Next!

     Missile silo in space, I reckon.  Note the command capsule attached, which certainly didn't get into orbit in that position.  Probably launched atop the silo as it's final stage, then redeployed once in orbit.  Manned or un-manned?  Hard to say.  Also, I suspect that's a lasing-rod for target acquisition, not an aerial; it is aligned along the silo, towards where it would be launching it's missiles, after all.  Next!

     Conrad unsure about this one as you don't see it very clearly.  Again, note the command capsule, and that the platform has two distinct halves.  Manned orbital missile silo?  Next!

     Those are radial cooling fins, so my best estimate is that this puppy is a variety of laser or charged-particle beam weapon, powered by a nuclear reactor, and it needs those fins to dump waste heat.  The 'flower' arrangement appears to be a protective screen, preventing any reflection of the beam.

     There you go, 49 seconds of film analysed for you, thanks to a question nobody asked.  We'll be coming back to this scene's later images, so don't go away now.  And the Snip function seems to work perfectly well; which is good news for all you gentle readers, since I don't have to take photographs that feature reflections and light pollution.

Finally -

Today, unusually, is my day off since I'm working Saturday <hack spit>.  For untold aeons - okay, okay, for three and a half years - my day off has been Thursday if I'm working Saturday.  Why the sudden change?  Do they know something I don't?  Conrad is suspicious.  Or, I should clarify, more suspicious than usual.

     O and don't expect two posts today, as there is every possibility I'll be doing the weekly shop tonight.  It being Wednesday.  Did I mention that already?

*  And I can click-bait with Pamela Anderson again.

The Avengers!

NO You Assuming Asses!

Conrad, although he has returned DARPA's Telepathy Helmet, knows exactly what you're thinking right now:  " What can the raddled old remora be about to unleash on the Marvel Cinematic Universe now?"

     Well, not going to lie, invoking the Avengers does allow me to use one of their illustrations as click-bait.  Art!

     Yesteryon ought to have prepared you for this, because HA! Conrad is talking about the television series from Perfidious Albion, not the South Canadian comic book franchise.  It began a long, long time ago - though still in this galaxy - as a black and white series which focussed more on Ian Hendry's character than Patrick McNee's.  Art!

     The initial series had the proposition of Doctor Keel (Hendry's character) trying to avenge the murder of his fiancee, aided by the sudden arrival of John Steed.  This lasted for one season, after which Steed became the lead character, escorted by Doctor Martin King if only briefly, then by the wonderfully-named Venus Smith, a nightclub singer - Art?

Pondering on the vagaries of fate and fame

     Then we had the arrival of the appropriately-titled Cathy Gale, who blew into the series much like a hurricane because nobody like her had been seen in staid old fuddy-duddy British television before.  At least not as a heroine.  She was an exceedingly tough nut, skilled in un-armed combat, able to handle a gun with ease and chose to wear leather apparel that would have been closely akin to what fetishists of the time donned.  Art!

"The sear is worn, the sights are askew and the bolt has a hair-line fracture."

     She was also an anthropologist, so clever too <Conrad's heart beats a little faster>*.

     In all of this Mister Steed underwent a transition from being a Harry Palmer lookalike, to being the walking epitomy of Britishness.  Bowler hat, umbrella, three-piece suit and carnation, representing An Un-named Branch Of British Intelligence. Or was it Counter-counter-counter Intelligence?  Somesuch.

     THEN!  came colour and the arrival of Emma Peel, played by the positively delicious Diana Rigg, for what many consider to be the show's acme.  Since this "many" includes Conrad, that's what it was.  Art!

<sigh>
Also an outstanding theme tune, which never hurts a series

     By this time the series had metamorphosed into what cleverer pundits than I have called "spi-fi" (alongside "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." and "Get Smart"), which teetered on the brink of self-satire until and during the last season, with Tara King.  Art!

Don't ask me, I've no idea either

     There you go, a whistle-stop tour of "The Avengers" as was.  And you're welcome.  We shan't go into "The New Avengers" because it wasn't that good, certainly not in comparison to it's predecessor, which I've already expressed as my opinion (the only one that matters here) so that's that.

     Motley!  Let's recreate a classic scene where Emma Peel is lying on a set of miniature train tracks, except we'll have to use the full-size version as there aren't any miniature ones round here, and there aren't any convenient small trains either, so we shall have to use real life full size ones, too. I'm sure it will be fine.

     What can possibly go wrong?

WHAT!?

As you may or may not be aware, Your Humble Scribe took out a subscription to "The Daily Beast" a couple of months ago, back when they were breaking revelations about Senator Eddie Munster on a weekly basis, if not more frequently.  Instantly the subscription was paid the news flow about him stopped; still, the rest of their coverage proves that South Canadian politics and politicians have not advanced one iota from when Ambrose Bierce was satirising them in the 1880s -

     - which is as far as we're going into the murky turbid waters of Politics.  No, what alarmed and interested Conrad in equal measures today was this.  Art!

     HOW DID I MISS THIS!

     You know me, a sucker for a crossword, especially the cryptic ones, not to mention codewords.  I shall have to be cautious here, as any dipping my taloned toes into word-puzzle waters may lead to a long, long detour.

Contra Mortui Viventes!

We have dealt with the Roman auxiliaries who would confront the living dead in their humungous hordes, as well as the weapons of the individual legionary.  Quite besides tactics, which subject is inevitably subjective, let us look at how the Roman legion would defend itself against a mass attack of the revenant mob.  Art!

     This is a Roman ballista, one of their heavier weapons, which you can think of as a giant crossbow.  It fired an enormous arrow capable of killing at many times the distance of a thrown javelin, out to the range of normal archers.  Where it differed in use against masses of murderous meatbags is that it could quite easily smash through half a dozen in sequence, and whilst getting in a headshot was unlikely (still possible however) a hit from one of these puppies would shatter bones, tendons and muscles, rendering <ahem> to borrow a term from modern military parlance, an M-Kill.  Art!

The business bit

     These weapons would like back behind the Roman's front lines, possibly with a detail to guard them, and would be picking off files of revs before they got anywhere near the legionaries.  Moreoever, after the battle their bolts could be re-used, as long as they got a thorough cleaning.  Environmentally sound ammunition!

     Okay, that's it for artillery with a relatively flat trajectory.  Tomorrow we are very probably going to be examining that class with a parabolic trajectory.  I bet you can hardly wait.

"It makes a hole THIS big ..."

Finally -

Not only have I not tackled any of The Daily Beast's crosswords, I've not even begun on the jigsaw-puzzle version, although more out of it's awkward size more than how cryptic the clues are.  Maybe later tonight.

In the meantime, chin chin, pip pip and please leave Channel D open for Ilya.

Under The Cringing Stars

The last photo entry into the BBC's "Under The Stars" theme is rather a groan-inducing pun, that leaves the Milky Way entirely out of it and is more to do with shadow (the Latin for which is "Umbra") than light and stars.  Art!

     As they add in their hilarious comment, this person will be under the stars wherever they go, unless of course their umbrella is destroyed by either flamethrower or industrial car-crusher**.

*  Okay, okay, so it's a fusion-powered pumping unit.  Same difference.

**  Remote possibilities, I grant you.  Yet still faintly possible <crosses fingers>

Cool Your Jets, Pets

Yes Indeed, Mister Steed!

I shall have to explain my little pop culture divertissement, shan't I? because I very definitely doubt any of you watched "The Avengers" first time round as you were either 1) not born or 2) were born but had no concept of what quality television was.  Art!

Britishness personified

     John Steed was the only constant in the series from it's beginning to - ah - the "New Avengers", which was new, to give it credit, but not very Avenger-y*.  I could go on a lot more (and probably will, later in the year) about Major The Honourable John Wickham Gascoyne Beresford Steed, but suffice to say that Patrick played him as he'd seen his senior officers behave in the Royal Navy during the Second Unpleasantness - " - life as seen through the bottom of a whisky glass" if you want more detail.

Then and before then

     ANYWAY let us carry on with this facile fulminating farrago.  As mentioned in yesteryon's blog, Conrad is a big fan of things exploding, because there are few things in life that cannot be improved by the addition of explosions.  Unless it was an explosion in the first instance, in which case it was probably as awesome as it was going to get.  Art!

     This, gentle reader, is Eggborough Power Station in the hinterlands of wildest Yorkshire, where they talk funny and detest Lankies which was deemed to be a financial mill-stone and was subsequently sold to some developers with plans three years ago.  O what plans they had! <insert evil cackle here>.  If Shelli were reading this she'd be sharpening her knife and fork and checking the salt and pepper shakers were full.  Her veganism only goes so far ...

     Well, regardless of what plans they had, there were eight gigantic cooling towers and an enormous chimney on site that had to be taken care of, which is technical-speak for 'demolished'.  The simplest way to do this would be having a steeplejack atop each tower, smacking the component bricks down into the interior as they gradually work their way lower.  Sadly, the suits running this operation decided that waiting until 2047 for this demolition method to finish wasn't efficient enough.  So - EXPLOSIONS AHOY!  Art?

     It's a sobering thought that each of those towers flexing like damp tea-towels is actually composed of eleven thousand tons of reinforced concrete.  The idea, lest you be confused, is to collapse each cooling tower into it's own 'footprint' so that there's no collateral damage to other structures or the crowds of people who simply had to attend - public hangings having gone out of style a couple of centuries ago.  Art!

     

Flimsy as yoghurt pots

     This means that each structure has to fall horizontally; not perfectly because we are dealing with real life, just as completely as possible.  This is also probably why they only demolished four towers at once; any more and you risk the structures experiencing compound shock waves from neighbouring detonations, making an already fraught process a lot more dangerous.

     Would you like to see the end result?  Of course you would.  Art!

     This is what the demolition company wants to see - a neat, tidy collapse of the structures vertically without damaging anything beyond the exclusion zone.

     Conrad predicts that the second tranche of cooling tower demolitions will be pretty much the same as these.  What he looks forward to is the 220 yards tall chimney being demoed, because that's a far harder proposition!

     I say, motley, would you like some gin and strawberries?  

Conrad Conquers Crossword

If you have been following BOOJUM! of late then congratulations! you have just prevented your descendants from either uranium mine slavery or being dissected for spare parts.  Also, you will have noticed that I have been wrestling in mortal combat with a particularly stubborn jigsaw puzzle.  

     Late-breaking news: the jigsaw has been bested.  Art?

     What now follows is solving the crossword itself.  I shall let you know how that goes**.

Stop The Cavalry

The Arme Blanche, as cavalry of the time liked to think of themselves, found the First Unpleasantness rather a trial.  For one thing, infantry armed with magazine-fed breech-loading rifles could fire sufficiently fast and at such a distance as to severely discomfit a cavalry charge, quite beside having machine guns as well.  To which you could add barbed wire (we may come back to this) and trenches, both of which severely hampered cavalry action.  Then you can add in artillery fire and gas.

     However!  Art?

     There were occasions when cavalry happened to be in the right place at the right time, as above.  Our protagonist has not yet painted his British Horse, so Conrad waits with interest to see what becomes of them.

     As an aside, memoirs written at the time and later about the British retreat before the Teuton's 'Kaiserschlacht' offensive of March 1918 mention that they'd have been completely cream-crackered IF the Teutons had possessed cavalry.  Which they didn't, it being deemed a profligate luxury.  There are legs in this subject, yet we may avoid it for a while.  You the gentle reader can only take so much.

     

Hmmm, the motley appears to have passed out.  Clearly unable to cope with strawberries.

No Love For Vincent Buglioso

Ha!  Only kidding, Conrad cannot help but bow to a man who took on the Kennedy Conspiracy Industry and gave it a severe thrashing.  Since payday has now been and gone, one wonders if it's apposite to order a copy of his JFK magnum opus - one for later, I feel <wallet squeaks in anguish>.

     ANYWAY if you look at Vincent's academic career, his further education began at the University of Miami, an institution he entered under a -

     Tennis scholarship?

     Hmmmmm.  There was an eight-year gap between this event in 1956 and his graduating as a law student, top of his class no less in 1964.  So there was a gap of at least four years between ending his racketeering days and beginning his legal ones.  <sigh> okay, so we may need to invest in a bibliography of Vinnie as well as his various legal opii***.

Finally - 

I just wanted to make you aware of sci-fi author Bob Shaw, who hailed from the entirely unfashionable environs of Northern Ireland way back in the late Sixties.  Northern Ireland was, in sci-fi terms, further adrift than the Fastnet lighthouse.  I got his autograph on a paperback in the early Eighties, I'll have you know - lost decades ago.  Anyway - Art!

Bob, droll as dithyrambs

     We shall be coming back to Bob, O yes indeed Mister Steed.

     Which is where we came in.

*  Except for that one about the poisoned projectile patches, that was pretty good.

**  O how I shall let you know.

***  That is the plural of "Opus" isn't it?

Foiled!

Again

Your Humble Scribe usually takes a stroll into Babylon-Lite of a Sunday, to up his Fitbit step count and to get a bit of fresh air, and also to see what delicacies might be going cheap at the Co-Op, and (so many ands!) to get the Sunday edition of the MEN.  Manchester Evening News for the unenlightened.

     EXCEPT NOT!  I arrived a good hour earlier than normal and all the papers had been tidied away.   Grrrrrr!

     Which isn't exciting enough to generate a clickbaity picture, so let's have a pulp sci-fi cover instead.  Art!

     Don't ask me to match picture to story; it could apply to any or all of them.  I bet the lantern-jawed WASP hero is just out of shot, wielding a ray-gun, all ready to jump in and slay the dragon.  Probably just waiting until madame's clothing gets a bit ripped, the perv.

     ANYWAY let the recollections begin.  

2020

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2020/08/hooray.html

2019

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2019/08/go-tell-it.html

2018

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2018/08/your-curmudgeon-is-here.html

2017

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-future-is-fright.html

2016

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2016/08/how-to-rate-your-mad-scientist-minion.html

2015

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2015/08/its-edward-lear-with-gear.html

2014

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2014/08/i-know-its-late.html

2013

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2013/08/noise-heat-flies.html

How Did I Miss This?

You Ought To Know, By Now

That Conrad has an interest/obsession/worrying familiarity <delete where applicable> with things that go BANG, and the bigger the explosion the more interest there is.  Obviously, when you get to thermonuclear weapons there's no upper limit to how big the bang, which palls a little.

     Non-nuclear explosions of near-nuclear magnitude?  Now there's an interesting and thinly-populated field.  Which is why Your Humble Scribe was intrigued by a mention on the BBC's website about the Swiss hamlet of Mitholz, and the 'sinister lurking terror in the background'.  At first this sounded like the real-life equivalent of "The Trollenberg Terror" - Art!

The suspenseful climax!

     Here an aside.  Your Humble Scribe has only seen the film, which is based on a very low-budget television series.  It's a pretty good film, with Warren Mitchell in a serious role for once, alongside Forrest Tucker as the obligatory South Canadian lead.  Art!

Forrie and Warrie

     Where were we?

     O yes.  You see, there was a Swiss army munitions storage site at Mitholz, carved out of the mountainside, which contained seven thousand tons of ordnance.  We might run to a diagram here, if Art can put down his plate of coal -

     As you can guess, there was an explosion on-site on December 19 1947, one of a series that only ended on December 28.  Nine people were killed and eleven injured, which is getting off very lightly when you consider that three thousand tons of explosives and ordnance detonated or burned.  Art!

Before and after

     The village was almost completely demolished; reconstruction was problematic because of the bombs and shells that had been hurled across the valley and which lay covered by snow.  Art?

Ordnance mimicking Conrad: both being old and cranky

     That was 1947.  The lurking problem today in 2021?  Well, as already mentioned, there were seven thousand tons of ordnance in store when the explosion happened.  A couple of hundred tons are believed to lie in the cone of debris and rubble, with over three thousand tons still remaining in the collapsed tunnels under the mountains.  The Swiss government, feeling a bit antsy about this potential arsenal going BANG, has decided to remove the bang-creating stuff but not until 2031, as things have to presumably move very, very slowly.  Explosives left alone for 85 years tend to degrade and decompose into very, very sensitive compounds.  Art!

Picturesque - for now

     The Swiss authorities, being quite Teutonic and thorough, have placed dozens and dozens of sensors and cameras within the tunnels lest anything happen, so the village residents will get a warning, at least.  This will give them time to get clothes and boots on, unlike 1947, and perhaps gain their car, if the snow's not too deep.

     Still, a three-thousand ton explosion.  Again, how did I miss this one?

     Motley!  Get the extension lead out, we're going to see what happens when an aerosol can gets microwaved*!

Back To Being Sublime And Shizzle

Yes, we are back on that "Under The Stars" theme that the BBC was hosting on it's website.  A lot of these photographs have featured the Milky Way, our home galaxy, probably because it's dramatic and impressive in photographed form, and you can't deny that there's a whole lot of stars involved; whereas picking out a single star or constellation is, by comparison, a lot less impressive.  Art!

     This one is by Arpan Uzir, and is of the Milky Way arching over the town of Leh in the Ladakh region of India.  He states that it's a panorama of 11 separate shots, not that I can see any seams.  This particular region is a hotspot claimed by three different countries; do the stars seem bothered?

     Let's have another - Art!

     This one is by Roy Howarth (note his signature) and is of both the Milky Way (again!) and an art installation called the " Scallop".  He had to wait for a window where both would be visible, at Aldeburgh of This Sceptred Isle, meaning he was there at the unearthly hour of 2 ante meridian.  

Yes, About That Scallop

There's no sense of scale in the photograph above, mostly because the Scallop is on the beach at Aldeburgh and there's nothing to therefore show how large it really is.  The blurb is that it stands four yards high and if Art will put down his plate of anthracite - 

     There you go.  It is dedicated to the composer Sir Benjamin Britten, who lived at Aldeburgh, and if you're curious enough I'll bet that inscription is detailed somewhere via Google.  Sir BB was one of this nation's most prominent composers of the twentieth century, go and Youtube his name if you're unclear about what proper music is, you with your bleep-bleep dance music**.

What A Combination

A yes, back to the motorcycle-sidecar combinations of the Second Unpleasantness.  Conrad has never sat down and pondered why these were a thing in the Teuton and Sinister armies of that era; certainly Perfidious Albion (and her Commonwealth and Dominions) and the South Canadians never went in for them in any but a very minor way.  Art!

" Heinz!  Doctor Goebbels is not going to be happy with you!"

     I popped the question "Why?" on the SOTCW Facebook pages and got replies about substituting steel for steeds, about speediness and it also being a cheap way to motorise troops.  All perfectly valid.  I can also add that it gave the speed, acceleration and manoeuvrability of a motorbike, but with a light machine-gun added to give it teeth.  After all, you can't exactly ride a motorbike alone and wield a weapon, can you?

 After all, you can't exactly ride a motorbike alone and wield a weapon, IN REAL LIFE, can you?

Finally -

Your Humble Artisan is making headway with the jigsaw-puzzle crossword and only has about 70 pieces left to place.  These are, of course, the most anonymous and difficult to match against the master picture, which is inconveniently tiny.  However, it doesn't look as if I've made much progress, so I shall put off posting any pictures until further completed.  After that comes the crossword; I think I'll just do it in fibre-tip and see if it clears away afterwards and if not then bin it is.  That's me all over.  Ruthless.

*   I shouldn't have to say this but DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!

**  You know, like Royksopp, whom I like a lot***.

***  Contradictory?  Yep, that's us.  Do keep up!