Professional Postal Porch Pirates

I May Need To Explain This A Little Further

Conrad is unsure if readers in This Sceptred Isle - both of them - are familiar with the South Canadian phrase 'Porch pirate', so I shall explicate.

     No, Vulnavia, they possess none of the charm, swagger and Robert Newton accent of traditional pirates.  Art!

Altogether now:  "ARRRR JIM LAD!"

     No, I am afraid that they are sordid opportunistic thieves who steal unattended packages that have been delivered to a home address, which have not up to that point been collected or taken indoors.

     Here a tangential diversion.  Hey, I did wait until we were 96 words in!

     Okay, okay, you may remember us featuring the South Canadian bonkers scientist Mark Rober, whose claim to fame is that he worked at NASA.  I say 'bonkers' advisedly, because he may be mildly eccentric and is far too clever to call 'mad'.  If you discount the swimming pool full of jelly wh

     ANYWAY Mark decided to tackle the problem of Porch Pirates with a bit of forward thinking.  Art!

     Here we see his 'Glitter Bomb Mark 4'.  This shows the bomb in it's naked state, then as the fake parcel is opened, and the half-pound of glitter being sprayed everywhere.  Not to mention the fart spray, flashing red and blue lights and a recorded message from the police.  If you want to the full story here it is:

BOOJUM!: Smarty Party Glitterati

     Mark also included a transponder, so he was able to track down the thieves.  Apart from the ones who shot his GB4 apart when it triggered.

     Well now, you might ask, why all this mention of porch pirates - I'm not going to en-noble them any more with capitalisation - in the Intro out of nowhere?  O I thought you'd never ask!  Art!

     The heart of this Intro is a heartfelt plea on Quora from a Quoran - as they call posters over there - about UPS, a South Canadian postal delivery service.

Why does UPS get away with stealing packages (UPS says contact the sender, the sender gives a tracking number, UPS tracking shows it delivered, buy my Ring camera shows no UPS truck on my street that day)?

     I hope you're not expecting a shining testament in support of UPS, because the prime reply to this query was not very satisfying.  

Not sure how often they get away with it, but living in San Francisco I no longer allow any packages to be delivered by UPS. They regularly forge signatures on packages or simply put a scribble mark where the signature is supposed to go. They also drop packages at locations when noone is home or when there's noone at the front desk. 

     No! I am not merely trying to up the Word Count, you need to read and experience the verisimilitude of a genuine reply.  Art!

     Hearken yea, for Conrad has input about this, going back a couple of years to when I was a temp at Footasylum HQ, dealing with the purchasing public, who were ever getting in touch to complain about non-delivery of their trainers or yoga pants.

     As mentioned above by matey, the Footasylum carriers DHL, Yodel and Amazon would issue a tracking number that a client could track the progress of their parcel with.  Best practice for the delivery driver was to hand a parcel to the purchaser AND GET A PHOTOGRAPH OF IT.  No need for a signature.  If there was nobody home they were instructed NOT to simply dump it on the doorstep, because that was asking for it to be stolen.  Art!

     They were told to put it in a secure location, out of line of sight, and to leave a note about it.  Those criminal UPS employees might get away with nicking and forging on a couple of occasions here in Perfidious Albion but no more than that, because Footasylum and the carriers kept stats on who delivered what and when and where.  If parcels were supposedly delivered with no proof of same, enquiring minds would take a closer look.  We could tell what had been packed at the warehouse and sent out thanks to everything being filmed.  If it never arrived then that was an issue between purchaser and carrier - which did happen.  On occasions the parcel got 'lost in transit' but again, if this happened more than a couple of times, things would be investigated.

     Just another reason those benighted South Canadians ought to become Commonwealth subjects and acknowledge Kingie!  Art?

Conrad's Afternoon Off

More of an off afternoon.  Your Humble Scribe had to have a podiatry assessment this afternoon in Lesser Sodom, with Adnan, ace podiatry graduate.  One feels for him, poor bloke, since his business is dealing with sweaty feet all day long.  Mine are not, since I have had a shower.  

     ANYWAY it turns out Conrad has a diabetic ulcer on his right big toe, which - SIT BACK DOWN! - I will not portray, for fear of your delicate stomach.  Art!

     It now has an elaborate dressing on it, which my Samsung is not co-operating with, so use your imagination.  The dressing has to be kept clean and DRY, which will mean taping my foot into a plastic bag when showering.  

     The most horrifying thing about our interaction was me mentioning that I was watching the boxed set of "Lost" and Adnan looked completely baffled.  Poor chap, he's only 23.  Art!

Lossed

"The War Illustrated Edition 200 16th February 1945"

Conrad cannot remember what picture comes next so let's just crack on with it.  As I recall we were detailing the pictures present in the centre-pages montage, which were emphasising that this was winter, with lots of snow on the ground.  Art!

    As I recall, these are South Canadian troops, who appear to have looted some Belgian civilian's bedroom linen drawer.  However, breaking up a camouflage uniform outline and helping to blend in both help.

     Here we see British troops using winter camouflage, and rather more of it than their trans-Atlantic cousins.  Note that they've gone to the bother of concealing the barrels of their weapons with white cloth, except for the numpty on the left.  It does make it stand out, rather.   I bet they're proper soggy and wet, lying prone in snow.

Minor Plot Point

Conrad realised a minor factoid about "Lost".  Nobody who survived the aircraft crash had a mobile phone, did they?  Art!

     The phones of two decades past were not the slim, multi-faceted function devil digital devices that we have today; they more resembled a brick with electronics added.  They couldn't take photos (IF THEY WORK SAMSUNG ARE YOU LISTENING) or text or send e-mails.

     Mind you, they would have been a wasting asset, because once their battery had run down, they were quite useless.  Unless you can find any use for a collection of dead electronics and exhausted lithium batteries.

     Just an aside.  Art!

Getting Stoned

NOT LIKE THAT.  No, I meant the slim yet not non-zero chance of walking around in your garden and being hit on the head and slain by a meteorite, because it may happen.  Not so far BUT ONE DAY! it will happen.  Art!

     This is the impact of a meteorite in British America at Prince Edward Island, which thankfully didn't hit either of the people who live there.  Obviously it wasn't that large.  It would still have put a crimp in your day if it hit your head.  Or even your foot.  Especially your big toe, and all the more do if you happened to have a diabetic ulcer.

     Hmmmm - BUT ONE DAY! - what about Tunguska, I wonder.

Finally -

Darling Daughter and Quiet Tom are up for a visit and thus Edna has five Hom. Sap. to pester, rather than merely three.  O is she enjoying herself!  Well, yes, she is actually, just to be clear.

If I Were To Say "TMDR"

You Would Doubtless All Castigate Me

For mis-spelling "TLDR" which does not mean "Turbo Laser Destructo Robot" but instead the far more prosaic and boring "Too Long Didn't Read", meaning that what has been posted violates the laws of brevity.  Art!

     Yes yes yes, I know what it looks like, but this is what the AI Art Generator drew up on the prompt text "Turbo Laser Destructo Robot".  It's not my fault the idiot likes to plagiarise.  Perhaps I should have used "Turbo Laser Destructo RAY" instead and see what that might have produced.  Art!

     Hmmmmm.  Perhaps.

     ANYWAY you'd be completely wrong, "TMDR" is not a typo.  It is, in fact, a song-writing credit, which Your Humble Scribe came across back in the Eighties, when he was listening to a particular album.  Art!

     It's an absolute banger of an album and if you're not familiar with it YOUTUBE AND SPOTIFY ARE THAT WAY.  "Thomas Dolby" is a shortened version of the artist's full name: Thomas Morgan Dolby Robertson.  Fun fact: one pence from the royalties from this album went to the "Venice In Peril" charity appeal.

     Here is where we swerve slightly and bring up the lyrics to one of the best songs on the album, "One Of Our Submarines".  For Lo! we are going to do a Little Musical Critique, except a bit longer than little.

One of our submarines is missing tonight

This autobiography was possibly an inspiration for TMDR.  I've chosen this illo because no, Dougal, those are not dustbins being dumped into the ocean depths, they are depth charges intended to crush the hull of that there submarine

Seems she ran aground on manoeuvres

A very real problem in the old submarines of the Second Unpleasantness.  You had sonar and ASDIC to guide you but travel too fast over an uncertain area on a map and yes, you could run aground

One of our submarines

A hungry heart

To regulate their breathing

Ah, this is TMDR waxing poetic, because one thing a submarine lacks is a heart.  It does have an engine, perhaps this is a sly  artistic allusion.  Art!

This equipment is the 'regulate their breathing' kit.  It used scrubbers to remove CO₂ from the air whilst the submarine was submerged, meaning that people wouldn't asphyxiate thanks to no fresh air.
One more night

The Winter Boys are freezing in their spam tin

"Spam tin" refers, in typical insouciant British style, to their sub.  Art!

Rated for fifty fathoms

The Baltic moon

Along the northern seaboard

This is interesting!  If we are talking Second Unpleasantness then a British submarine would have a very very hard time getting into the Baltic.  Geography, you see.  Art!

And down below

The Winter Boys are waiting for the storm

Maybe so, except for a sub at depth any storm on the surface ain't going to bother them very much.  I will forgive TMDR as he's not a sailor or submariner.

Bye-bye empire, empire bye-bye

Shallow water - channel and tide

Yes, shallow water.  The threat to every submarine

And I can trace my history

Down one generation to my home

In one of our submarines

One of our submarines

TMDR's uncle was lost aboard the British submarine P48 when it was lost with all hands off the Tunisian coast in late 1942.  There's more to this that we may come back to, if you're good.

The red lights flicker, sonar weak

Air valves hissing open

Half her pressure blown away

Flounder in the ocean

None of this is particularly good, if you're wondering.  'Red light' is used as illumination for those working in darkness as it doesn't take the eye as long to adapt as with white light if they then have to use their night vision.  'Sonar weak' is bad, because this is how you detect underwater obstacles.  If the pressure is down then there's a serious leak in the hydraulic or power systems.  Nor do you want to ever 'flounder' because capsizing or swamping is a real risk.

See the Winter Boys

Drinking heavy water from a stone

Pure nonsense!  Heavy water was only available in vanishingly small quantities in the Second Unpleasantness, you don't get it from a stone and it's not potable.   More poetic licence, one suspects.

Bye-bye empire, empire bye-bye

Shallow water - channel and tide

Bye-bye empire, empire bye-bye

Tired illusion drown in the night

And I can trace my history

Down one generation to my home

In one of our submarines

One of our submarines

One of our submarines

     I'm not going to reprise previous critique over repeated verses.

     There is more to this story, so be good!

A Little Bit Of Gloasting

Conrad came across this sidebar item on the BBC News website and felt like kicking Dimya in the teeth with it.  Art!

Ah yes, the poster children for "Inflation".  Or something

     Now, unlike the 'official' figures in Ruffia, you can actually trust the ones that come out of This Sceptred Isle, so when this report says the inflation rate for December was 2.5%, then it was 2.5%.

     I can tell what you're thinking: 'Gosh, this is but a fraction of the 9.3% inflation rate in Modern-day Mordor!'

     Indeed, and then some.  The Ruffian's real inflation rate is three times what their headline figure is, so between 24% and 27%.  In the region of 10 times higher than the UK.  It's a lot higher for certain food items; 75% for potatoes, for example.  As I cruelly posted on Twitter, 'Ruffia - where the potato is a luxury food item'.

     Don't get me started on Stagflation .....

"Everything will be fine!  Fine I tell you!  FINE!  FINE!"

Our Journey With Bernie

Okay, due diligence time, and on this one I may also check the quality of what's available on teh Interwebz.  No, I am not going to buy the FPG trading card collection  in order to get pristine imagery for the blog- a quick Google reveals that people are asking £1 or $1 per card, and this cheeky swine wanted - Art!

     Say hello to #63 "Soft Soldier".  Art!

     Hmmm.  I've not enlarged it as it's still unrecognisable.  The first word might be "American".  Then again it might easily not.

How To Make A Goldflake

Yes, I am hearkening back to that OPERATION GOLDFLAKE (that's how they write these things) where 60,000 Canuckistanian and British troops were moved in February 1945, from Italy to Leuze in Belgium.

     It might need re-telling, but there is an awful lot of staff work involved in an operation of this magnitude, all the more so as the transit has to be covert.  Art!

No snowflakes on this Goldflake

     Here I shall append a picture of just a paragraph from one page of the whole 23-page document about this operation.  Art!

"A.F.H.Q." stands for "Armed Forces Headquarters.  "S.H.A.E.F." stands for "Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force" which is where Eisenhower held court.

     If you read this Snip AND YOU OUGHT TO, you can see it deals with the outline of rations, personal equipment to be carried by the soldiery and accommodation en route - probably tents.

     The document also mentions an "Instruction" that will have been drawn up by whole companies of staff officers consulting march tables, railway capacity, freight tonnage and meteorological charts as well (if they were being thorough).  "Dress" is mentioned before "Security", which matters because Canuckistanian soldiers had a shoulder badge with "Canada" upon it, which might have given the game away.  Art!

     A small matter in itself, rather more significant when you're moving over 40,000 men wearing such a give-away.  You see?  You see what careful staff work pays attention to?

Meanwhile In Modern-day Mordor -

There's a Ruffian on Quora whom I follow with interest, who used to go by the handle "Misha Firer" because that was his name.  He would post long articles with photographs of life in Ruffia, revealing the incredible corruption inherent in the land.  Conrad was surprised he remained in the land of the living, and then realised that all his posts were in English, which seems to keep him under the FSB radar.  Art!

     His handle on Quora is now "Brutalsky", so the FSB may have been on the trail of Misha Firer.  He recently posted a long article about the M-1 highway between Moscow and the Polish border, which is far too long to add in here even in edited form.

     Conrad is glad he's still alive and kicking.  Proof there are a few decent Ruffians.

Finally -

IT at work is up the spout again.  This will happen if your software is 25-years old and a North Korean knock-off of a system with so many patches it looks like a recycled inner-tube.  Bah!

Less Raging Bull Than Howling Cow

That Reminds Me 

In that kind of interlinked way my brain has of making attachments at random.  You see, the Teutons of Second Unpleasantness iteration had a rocket launching system called the "Schweres Wurfgerat 41" or "Heavy Throwing Equipment 41" which was designed to launch very large unguided rockets, destruction of the enemy for the use of.  Art!

     It wasn't very accurate, being used to bludgeon an area instead of a particular target, and the stubblehoppers using it nicknamed it 'Hulende Kuh" or "Howling Cow" because they thought it sounded just like that sound effect.

     ANYWAY what I wanted to relate to you in this Intro is a tale from Youtube Reddit, that makes Bitshat Crazy look sane and normal.  Narrating the piece was Underweight Narrator, hereafter UN, her appalling mother whom we shall dub Howling Cow, hereafter HC, and her Gluttonous Idle Brother, hereafter GIB.  When the tale began UN was 17 and her brother 23.  UN was studying and holding down two part-time jobs, GIB was jobless and lived in the attic with his equally shiftless girlfriend, and HC lorded it lardily o'er the household with her 300 lb bulk.  Art!

300 pounds of potatoes

     UN was underweight because her greedy entitled brother would come downstairs and take all the food out of the fridge, leaving only bread and pasta - which UN couldn't eat thanks to being gluten intolerant.  If she spent money from her jobs on food purchases, GIB would eat it all.  She then harassed him mercilessly until he paid up.

     You may be wondering how the land whale HC managed to keep her figure if her son was stealing all the food, and Conrad wondered this too.

     Things got worse when UN won an all-in scholarship to study at college far away; she didn't say where it was, yet it was far enough that they were willing to fly her out there.

     The fly in the ointment, or shark in the swimming pool, was of course - obviously! - HC, who immediately forbade UN from leaving, because then she'd be alone with GIB.  Hmmm the logic here is not adding up.  Art!

     Fortunately for UN she was able to enrol in secret, and her grandparents, who had her back, sent her the money for enrolment and living expenses.  By mysterious means HC found out about this and smashed UN's laptop, so that all her admin for admission couldn't be completed, as this would definitely stop her from going to college, BWA HA HA! Doctor Evil pinky snicker.

     UN was a lot more resourceful and determined than HC realised, and began to squirrel away clothing and items at her grandparents, until a couple of weeks later she turned 18, was no longer a minor and didn't need adult permission to study.  Her father, long separated from HC (and who can blame him) bought her a replacement MacBook.  Her grandparents came to collect her, upon HC realising that her punching-bag was leaving, had a full blown Apoplectic Frenzy.

     End result: UN ended up having her head impact a set of concrete stairs as the land whale physically tackled her to try and stop her leaving.  After departure, she threatened to sue UN for 'Emotional abandonment'.  Despite not having enough money to fill the fridge.

     I'm afraid the madness does not end there.  O noes.  UN, unsurprisingly, moved to live with her grandparents until she left for college and came out to see her car one morning, with it's tyres slashed and faecal matter smeared over the handles and windscreen.

     Gosh, whoever could have done that!  Her grandparent's security cameras caught HC sneaking onto the property at night and doing the damage.  This led to a judicial encounter where she was arrested for trespass and property damage.  Consequently she was fined and sentenced to 2 years probation, and UN & grandparents wisely got a restraining order against her.

     A twist in the tail came when GIB moved out and informed UN that their mother had been taking most of the food, not him, in order to maintain her beer-keg physique.

     At story's end UN was on an exchange program in South Korea, having an absolute blast and living her best life.  Don't you just love a happy ending?

The AI has been drinking

Here's One I Can Get Behind

Conrad's ceaseless quest for content meant he was scrolling down the feed, looking for items he could be sardonic or citric about, preferably both at the same time, and he came across this.  Art!

This will be an illo from "The Wolves Of Willoughby Chase" and yes I have both read the book and seen the film.  'How can this be?' I hear you quibble.  'For the last British wolf was slain in Scotland in the late eighteenth century?'

     Because this is a work of fiction.  Not only that, the wolves in question have travelled across the Channel thanks to the newly-constructed tunnel, and onto English shores, in a prolonged and savage winter.  Aiken's world is a subtly different one from the one we inhabit, as there was no 'Glorious Revolution' in 1688 and James III sits comfortably on the throne.  Art!

     I have fond memories of her short story collections, too, although I cannot for the life of me remember what the titles were.  Conrad will stoutly resist the siren call of Abebooks suggesting a purchase or two .....

There Are Some Jobs That Are Beyond Cool

Whilst the Orange Land Whale has been braying about Canada becoming the 51st State, possibly trying to distract from his sentencing on 10th January, the Canuckistanians have been helping their South Canadian brethren to directly fight the Californian wildfires.  Art!

     Yes it's a plane.  Watch closer.

     Yes, it's an amphibian.  Here it's not just taxiing across the briny deeps, it's actually loading up with tons of seawater.  This is the Canadair CL-415, a plane designed to fight large-scale fires by 'bombing' them with water.  Art!

Ha!  Take that, flames!

     One doubts these aircrew will have to buy a beer themselves when they land and go off-duty.  What an awesome Zen job to have!

     Of course - obviously! - Conrad could not leave the Tweet thread without making a sardonic comment:  EVIL CANADIANS STEALING AMERICAN WATER! and you can bet that a MAGA member will absolutely Repost this as the gospel truth.

Say Hello, Wave Goodbye

If you've been reading the blog for a while then you'll know we have featured islands in the past, and also that disgusting natural phenomenon known as a 'Mud volcano', which looks like the world's largest sewer backing up.  Now we can combine both in a single item.  Art!

     This series of stills is taken from the NASA Landsat satellites, and shows the Caspian Sea empty of islands in 2022, then the island appearing at Kunari Bank in 2023, where the mud volcano resides, and then it's gone again in late 2024.  All three pictures are off the eastern coast of Azerbaijan.  Art!

     This is the fate of most transient islands created by mud volcanoes, as the effect of tides, waves, currents and weather all erode them relatively quickly.  Art!

     There is even a Wiki page on "Mud Volcanoes In Azerbaijan" if you want to know more about the disgusting things.  You must be staggeringly bored if you do.

I Guarantee This Was Not On Putinpot's Bingo Card In 2022

Last night the Ukrainians hit the Ruffian Federation with something in the region of 200 drones and a handful of missiles, causing an immense amount of damage and setting things alight.  We don't often comment on these drone strikes, but this one was so large I have made an exception.  Art!

     The Ruffians are saying that all the drones and missiles were intercepted and only 'debris' fell on the targets.  Such debris must be made out of TNT and shaped charges to judge by the explosions, and be from drones the size of a B-52 bomber.  The fire started at the Engels fuel depot is still burning after 5 days.  Perhaps they could sell tickets for it as a tourist attraction?

Finally -

Having just finished one book of over 500 pages, I have now picked up "Wild Swans", which clocks in at 676 absent the Index.  Conrad: a glutton for punishment.

What For OPFOR?

Listen To Conrad, Parroting Army-Speak 

As if he knows what he's talking about <the horrid truth courtesy Mister Hand>

     DOG BUNS!  It that treacherous appendage weren't  part of me I'd have done an Ash-style amputation on it by now.  Art!

It's all fun and games until your hand gets demonically possessed

     Where were we?  O yes, Conrad was explicating.

     What distinguishes NATO forces from the Ruffian hordes?  And the Sinister hordes before them.  And the Tsarist forces before them.

     Training.  Currently, Ruffian training consists of being told which end of a bang-stick the bullets come out of, and then making what I believe is called a 'Zerg rush' at the opposition.  Art!

     It rarely ends well.  Chuck Pfarrer, in his interview with Jason Jay Smart, mentioned that Ruffian assaults ended in casualties of minimum 25% and an eye-watering maximum of 80%.
     NATO and what might be termed the 'Global West' have a different philosophy, because, to their generals, their greatest asset is manpower, and you train it properly in order that it does as well as humanly possible on the battlefield.

     This is where 'OPFOR' comes in.  It's one of those contractions that the military loves, because it baffles civilians.  In full form it would be 'Opposition Forces' and it means those forces playing the baddies.  Art!

     This is a British Scorpion (technically a Combat Vehicle Reconnaissance Tracked) bodged-up to mimic a Ruffian tank.  They skimped a bit with the heavy machine gun, didn't they?  They used a Scorp because it's a small tank, and Ruffian tanks are usually considerably smaller than NATO ones.  

     These would be used on exercises at BATUS, the British Army Training Unit Suffield, a gigantic area in British America where armoured and mechanised units get to practice modern armoured warfare.  For a long time the Sinister and then Ruffian OPFOR units had to use jury-rigged substitutes as above.

     Then came Desert Storm, and Hay Pesto! suddenly there were lots of genuine Ruffian captures being used as OPFOR.  Art!

     

South Canadian bootnecks driving a Ruffian tank

     This was a mixed blessing.  I recall reading about a South Canadian engineering officer responsible for maintaining their fleet of Ruffian BTRs, who exhibited an air of mild depression; the only mechanic skilled and experienced enough to keep the '8-wheeled coffins' in running order was leaving.

     Enter 'Covert Cabal', eminent bean-counting Youtuber, whose latest vlog was about Ruffian Tank Repair Factories.  Art!

The 103 BTRZ

     One of the Commenters came up with an outstanding Comment, about their experience at Anniston Army Depot, where he originally worked on the M1 and M1A1 Abrams tank.  He had a lot of experience and ability, so when all the Ruffian captures arrived, guess who got put in charge of stripping them down, repairing them and getting them out to the OPFOR troops?  Yes, him.

     His considered opinion was that "Ruffian equipment is very hard to work on".  As a contrast, he explained that the engine on an Abrams can be swapped out as a complete unit, thanks to it's modular design, then either repaired or replaced equally swiftly.  It takes about 45 minutes to remove the entire engine, and between 2 to 3 hours to replace it.  Art!

Doing the deed

     Not so with Ruffian kit.  O noes!  "That's not the case with Russian Equipment. It's all assembled one piece at a time in the engine compartment like a Chinese Puzzle. The engine and transmission are incredibly complicated as well."

     This is what we here in the evillll decadent Global West would call 'Ergonomics' and which the Ruffians would call 'Black magic' before crossing themselves and carrying on with their adjustable screw-wrench.  Conrad is minded of the Teuton panzers of the Second Unpleasantness, especially the Panther.  For Your Information, the Wehraboos all froth with excitement about how big it's gun was, and how thick the armour.  They ignore the horribly complex 60-piece gearbox, which was frequently destroyed by novice drivers simply moving into second gear.  Art!

Grind, baby, grind!

     'n4zou' - the now-retired Anniston Army Depot mechanic - described the Ruffian design mindset as being stuck in the Thirties, even for their brand-new kit: it all hearkened back to an attitude that did not want to move into the twenty-first century.  His team could put an stripped Abrams hull in at one end of their production line, and deliver a complete tank at the end of a single day.  To do the same with a T-72 could take a month, a whole week being spent merely getting the engine out.

     Ergonomics.  Defined in Ruffian dictionaries as "What?"

"The War Illustrated Edition 200 16th February 1945"

I wouldn't usually follow an item dealing with tanks like this with TWI, but I did promise yesteryon and Conrad is a man who keeps his promises*.  If you recall, this publication always published pictures two weeks after they had been taken, if not longer, so as not to provide the Teutons with any handy tactical information.  Art!

     It's unclear if this is staged or not and if not then the photographer ought to be getting their big fat head under cover, lest it be removed by shrapnel.  The caption states that a patrol is taking cover after being hit by mortar fire, possibly because the photographer is standing upright out in the open to take pictures.  This chap pictured is probably an NCO because he's carrying a Sten gun, and the ordinary rankers would be carrying rifles.  Also note how effective a white suit is in blending into the snowy background.

     I say, the GMPolice helichopter has been buzzing about overhead for some time.  There must be miscreants abroad.

GET YOUR TENSES RIGHT!

As we should all know by now, Conrad is a grammar and spelling Nazi of the very worst kind.  It's taken me decades to reach this level of achievement and I am proud proud proud.  

     Okay, enough pompous self-promotion.  Art!

     NO!

     If these scientists 'know' when this eruption will occur, then they have to know 'will', not 'could'.  Or, if the 'could' is primary in the text here, then 'know' should be swapped out for 'may'.

     Don't get me started on apostrophes.

Wheel Appeal

Dimya has been on the phone again, whingeing that BOOJUM! is vehemently anti-Ruffian, and I had to explain that we do occasionally publish an item quite flattering to the orcs, or more likely their ancestors, when they had a bit of art and cultivation to go round.  

     Art!

     Note the Cyrillic script used on this food tanker.  Yes yes yes, it might be Serbian or Bulgarian, but what does Occam's Razor teach us?  That, if it's Cyrillic, it's Ruffian.  Especially true considering what comes next.  Art!

     Here's the food tanker again, tootling along with a car following much too closely,  because you can't see ahead of the tanker and -

     A tyre explodes.  This is not something that happens every day, as a punctured tyre usually deflates, either rapidly or slowly, just not in an explodey kind of way.  The road surface looks well-maintained and smooth, so who knows what caused this blow-out.  Art!

     Here's the happy ending.  Following car did not end up tailgating the tanker, and that driver deserves a small award for keeping control and not jack-knifing or toppling the tanker.  I bet he had a word or two with the maintenance people back at the depot, though.

Finally -

Watched Episode 5 of "Department S" last night and O dearie me!  Sorry but golf is not a dramatic sport and it does not lend itself well to television, even if there was a daft gold-smuggling plot worked in. 3/10 Must Do Better.

     Now, we have remaindered sausages to consume!  A week past their 'Best Buy' date merely means they have - ah - 'matured'.  Yes, that's the word: 'matured'.

*  Sometimes.