Sequitur!

No! This Is Nothing To Do With Pruning The Roses

It is, in fact, Latin for "It Follows", and yes I can use Latin if I want to despite hating it in general, because ONCE AGAIN whose blog is it?  Thank you.  Art?

<sigh>

     No, Art, what I wanted you to create or produce was an illustration showing the derivation of a classical proposition, wherein an assertion is made and the conclusion begins ' - therefore, it follows that if all Border Terriers are dogs, then all dogs are Border Terriers.'

     Something like that.  Perhaps asking our resident Neanderthal to illustrate this was a little too much.  AI Art!

     Very literal, AI.  Conrad can see why your kind will never take over the world.  Unless you learn to lie, like HAL in

     ANYWAY I was thinking of an alternative title for today's blog, which would have been

"High Jink, Low Jinks, And IT SINKS!"

    Because, as promised, Your Humble Scribe has been checking out that very interesting Youtube channel "What's Going On With Shipping", which is all to do with the combustibility of egg yolks in a microgravity environment shipping.  From the looks of it Conrad would say global and international shipping.  Do they have anything to say about the recent Ruffian shipping disasters in the Black Sea?  O boy do they!  Art?

Volgoneft-212 - Before

     You may not have seen the above, when the V-212 was hale - or hale for a Ruffian ship - and hearty.  Art!

     This is the one that's been floating (pun intended) around the internet.  Sal - who is behind WGOWS - explained that it's the bow where the anchor is positioned, so at the point above the stern section is adrift.

     Now for a little diversion.  You ought to have noticed my recent blatherings about how important staff work is to modern armies, and I wonder if the armies of classical antiquity had similar? ANYWAY here we have an administrative insight into the world of international maritime traffic.  Art!

     This organisation does what it says on the tin, for <ahem> maritime trade that is international.  Neither of the Volgonaffs had an identification registered under the above, which means they were NOT intended for travel at sea.  On inland waterways, riverine systems and lakes, yes; on the big briney, no.  Even more relevant is the fact that with no IMO identity, these ships were not liable to any oversight, inspection or regulation, since they were for use in Ruffia itself.

     Also of note is that these ships were over 50 years old.  We have, on the blog, already blogiated about how they were single-hulled vessels, which have not been legally allowed in international waters for over 20 years.  Ooops.

     The question behind all this is - why were these vessels out on the open sea instead of a placid lake or river?  Art!

Placid Lake Placid

     Because the Ruffians fear an Ukrainian marine drone strike on the Kerch Bridge, which, whilst it may not be as logistically important as it used to be, is still a project very strongly associated with Putinpot, whose fee-fees might get hurt if it collapsed in a sea of fire.  Art!

     It's now protected by barge pontoons, meant to prevent ingress by horrid nasty Sea Babies.  The thing is, it also prevents access by large ships, which used to travel into the Sea Of Azov, which is more like a lake with pretensions than a sea.  There they would carry out ship-to-ship transfers from smaller vessels like the Volgonaffs, except that cannot be actioned any longer.  So the smaller ships now have to travel into the Black Sea, which has no pretensions and is a sea indeed.

     What do you get at sea?

     Storms.  NO!  Not Storm Shadows.  Not yet, anyway.  High winds and choppy seas with big waves, which these small riverine tankers cannot cope with.  Their role - again, 50 YEARS AGO - was to travel on the Ruffian inland waterway network, not brave storms at sea.  Art!

    

     That cluster to the east is notably outside the Sea Of Azov and is milling about offshore of Taman, so I may be able to use that alternative title for real in the near future.

     "What's Going On With Shipping?" the niche Youtube channel you never realised you needed.

Meanwhile In Myanmar -

You may be forgiven for not knowing that there is a civil war raging in Myanmar, because it doesn't get a lot of coverage compared to Ukraine or the Middle East.  It began when the army mounted a coup and seized power in February 2021.  The rebel movement has increased in size and sophistication since then and is seriously challenging the military junta, whose leader admitted recently that things are bad.  Art!

     In times past the junta would have been able to appeal to Putinpot, who would have sent the Wagner Group, along with aircraft, to destroy everything and kill everyone and declare it peace.  No longer an option, as The Chinless Twod discovered.  In fact, if I were Ukraine .....

Opportunity Knox

Forgive the terrible pun, I couldn't resist.  More of "Goldfinger" I'm afraid.  Less about how cool and dashing and punny 007 was, more about the production design, which was by the irreplaceable Ken Adams.  One might have guessed Ken was responsible for the interiors of Fort Knox because of their sheer expansiveness; one thing you cannot accuse him of is thinking small.  Art!

Fort Knox entrance interior

Ken having a sly puff on set

     The end result.  Poseurs please note how dwarfed our protagonists are by the interior set, which is symbolic of blah blah blah.

Cool It

Waaaay back in the day Facebook used to throw up bizarre adverts on my home page, inspired by the algorithm having an off day, perhaps.  Those with very long memories may recall the 'Log Counting Software' and 'Portable Lumber Mills' they were trying to push.  Art!

Is this real LC

     Methinks a man with a pencil and clipboard could do just as well.

     ANYWAY Youtube has managed to mimic this incongruity of late.  Art!

     Why?  Why did this advert come up?  What is it about Conrad's on-line persona that makes the algorithm calculate that there is a spark-free fridge in my life?
     Actually ........ I think I may know.  That logo is for - Art!

     You ought to recall, as it's recent, that they're the ones whose crane was partially-destroyed and then rebuilt, and we described the whole gory process.  Maybe the algorithm reads BOOJUM!  Stranger things have happened.  They seem to have their long Teutonic talons in all sorts of industrial pies, don't they?  I wonder if Quiet Tom has heard of them, as he works in labs and with fridges.  Must bore him about this next time we engage.

What's This?

     Hmmmm this is what AI Art conjured into being when the text input was "Putinpot".  Very literal, AI.  You might consider that stuff has been put in pot.  Speaking of whom - Art!

     He held his annual 4 Hours Of Lies ceremony yesteryon.  Steve Rosenberg, of the BBC's Russian element, asked a very pertinent question about all the bad things going on in Ruffia today, and was The Little Tsar taking care of Ruffia?

     Steve speaks fluent Ruffian so there are no interpreters to massage either the question or answer.

     The Fun-Sized Foot Fiddler's response was to waffle on about Boris Yeltsin, admit that inflation was high 'but we're dealing with it' and ignore the rest of the question.

     Bafune.

Finally -

That's me gainfully on leave from now until 30th December, which I hope to spend, at least partially, indulging in hex-and-counter wargames in the most un-Christmaslike spirit imaginable.  Tee hee! said Conrad in the manner of his mentor and muse, The Grinch, whom is a splendid role model for the ages.

If I Were To Say "March Table"

Then You Might Think I Was Whanging On About Food Again

Not an unreasonable conclusion, given that it's one of my favourite topics for consumption, after beer.  

     Then you might jib a bit, thinking that it's December and nowhere near March, so has Conrad been at the cooking sherry again?

     Hardly.  Conrad would rather drink Mam Nuoc Fish Sauce from the bottle than sip sherry, it's disgustrous stuff and I remember the horrid milkshake it made back in the Sev

     ANYWAY Art!

     Food on a table, and it might very well be in March.  Art!

     Ah, so it was.  Art!

     I've never heard of it, but it does claw (sorry) part of the way towards the theme of today's Intro.  Because - Art!

     Er - not sure what's going on here.  However, it is undeniably a sword, and that completes the second part of our Intro's theme, that of 'Pen and Sword'.  Yes, it took a long time to get there and I'm not sorry one bit.

     Because again we're going to be looking at staff work, the dull necessity that underpins any major military operation and plenty of small ones, too.  For this we have to thank "AfricanStalingrad", who posts on Twitter about the campaign in Tunisia during the Second Unpleasantness.  His mancave makes mine look neat and empty.

     I shall attempt to make this as illuminating and even entertaining as possible, which is a daunting task: Conrad is willing to be folding money that there aren't websites dedicated to the typewriters used by HQ staff of any combatants.

     Art!

     This documents 'lines' seem to be made up from typed horizontal and vertical keystrokes, which must have needed the precision of a watchmaker.

     There's a lot of information to unpack in this document.  As you may guess, it's a table of organisation and timings for a military formation - a march  table.  Staff work of this kind is essential when large formations move in concert, because otherwise all you get is a gigantic traffic jam and utter confusion.  Art!

     The dates are for the 4th and 5th of April 1943, and mark the movement of an armoured brigade - about a third of a division - between offensives by the Allies in Tunisia.  Ol' Affy didn't mention which brigade, so Conrad looked closer and noticed a unit name - "2nd Lothians".  Working backwards, that meant this was 26th Armoured Brigade, of the 6th Armoured Division.  Art!

2nd Lothians in Tunisia

     Observe those tanks.  They are moving to a timetable drawn up at Divisional or Brigade HQ, observing the 'Density' instruction of 15 'Vehicles To The Mile', meaning they are too spread out for air attack to catch more than one or two vehicles at a time.  

     I also know that this was a move between positions, not the preface to an assault, because - completist that I am - Your Humble Scribe went over these dates in Volume IV of "The Mediterranean And Middle East" and the 6th Armoured Division is not mentioned in any of the battles around that time.  Art!

     One of the rare colour photographs of the British in Tunisia.  No, Dougal, it is not a tug-of-war between those men and the tank.  They are 'reaming' the gun barrel, to clean it out and get rid of encrusted sand or cordite.

     ANYWAY if we return to the march table, you'll see all the different units noted down, e.g."10 R.B. + Tp 153 AA Bty", which is incomprehensible gibberish to most of you but speaks volumes to either staff officers or milnerds.

     "10 R.B." means "10th Battalion the Rifle Brigade" which is an infantry battalion of an infantry regiment.

     "Tp 153 AA Bty" means "One troop of the 153rd Anti-Aircraft Battery".  This was a 'Heavy' anti-aircraft unit, using the whacking big 3.7" AA gun.  A battery would usually consist of 6 guns and a troop of 2.  Art!

The beast in question

     You can see the number of vehicles involved in moving this formation - 150 of them.  The Rifle Brigade and 153rd Battery being present, and how many vehicles it takes to shift them, doesn't appear magically on a chalkboard at HQ - the staff there have to be up-to-the-minute on what units are where and in what strength.

     Please bear in mind that these 582 vehicles are only one-third of the full strength of 6th Armoured Division and imagine how many typewriter keys will need to be hammered - and really hammered, as this was before the days of electric or digital keyboards.

 

What A Difference Four Hundred Years Makes

Over on Twitter (ha, take that fork up your fundament Elong Tusk!) Shaun Pinner asked a question his (Ukranian) wife asked - why on earth does the English language have the word 'Defenestration' in it?  She was puzzled that we had a word so very, very specifically about throwing people out of windows.

     Well, you know Conrad and words.  Let me consult my "Collins Concise Dictionary".  "Defenestration: the act of throwing someone out of a window.  originating from C17, from New Latin 'De-" + "Fenestra"".  Art!

     Behold!  This is the 'Defenestration Of Prague" which dates back to 1618.  The mob you see assembled are actually the Bohemian National Council, and the two unfortunates about to be propelled through the window are the two primary Roman Catholic members.  Those doing the propelling are the Protestant members.

     For those concerned, both members landed in a moat outside the building, so were merely bruised in body and dignity.

     Today - <leaves pregnant pause>

     

Back To Bernie And Our Journey

I think the outstanding take away I have from Bernie's artwork is the sheer unfairness that he portrays with his art; all the unfortunate victims who end up disembowelled or dismembered or otherwise discombobulated, through no fault of their own.  Even the young lady who went trespassing in "Mausoleum".  It's not as if you'd expect to find a pack of feral skeletons lurking in there, is it?  Art!

     Take a gander at #51, "The Very Devil" which, for once, doesn't feature disembowelment or dismemberment.  And more an imp than a demon, it seems.

A Social Media Channel You Never Knew You Needed

It's not been a good week for the Ruffian merchant navy.  You are doubtless aware by now of the three Black Sea tankers that have turned the beaches of the Black Sea as charcoal as the name.  Well, that's not all that befell the orcs at sea, because a floating crane also sank in the same storm that scuttled the tankers.  Art!

     I am minded of a quote from Admiral Beatty: "There seems to be something wrong with our Dog Buns! ships today."  

     This update on the most recent Black Sea submarine fleet was mentioned by Jake Broe on his Youtube channel - you may be ahead of me here - "Jake Broe", courtesy of another interesting Youtuber going by the title "What Is Going On With Shipping?" which I am definitely going to check up on.  Anchors aweigh! 

No "TWI" today, we've had enough of matters martial.

The Heart Of Darkness

In a very real sense.  Conrad, being a grumpy old man, has been complaining of late about how early in the afternoon the shades of night begin to fall.  Should the skies be overcast, then you need the house lights on by 15:00.  Art!

     Conrad is pretttty sure this is how "30 Days Of Night" got started, with the original writer and artist thinking "What if ....." and working from there.

Finally -

Wonder Wifey was gloasting about having made a jacket potato by using the Convection function of our new microwave, so Conrad is going to sit down and study the instruction manual to see what it says about chicken drumsticks.  I'll let you know.

Pen And Sword

No!  Not The Book Publisher

Many of whose fine volumes already decorate the walls of my Sekrit Layr, and whom I have spent countless pounds and hours with.  Despite this being a tangent, I think we need one of their covers to bait you, the audience in.  Art!

     No, Dougal, it's not a small man with a normal-sized sword, it's a normal-sized man with an enormous two-handed sword.  Looks pretty martial.  Possibly a bit of a niche market, mind.  Not too handy in what the South Canadians call 'home defence' either.

     ANYWAY allow me to meander on my way and get to the point 700 words later.  You see, I have been reading the various chapters in Doctor Peter Caddick-Adams "Victory In The West" about the Allies crossing the Rhine in March of 1945.  Art!

     This demonstrates how wide the Rhine was. You can't tell from a single picture like this how fast the river ran, either, but it ran fast and was raised by winter meltwater (and debris).  Getting across it was a major engineering challenge, certainly to begin with - what you see here is one of the bridges constructed after the amphibious vehicles, boats, pontoons and ferries had enabled the establishment of a beachhead on the opposite (Teuton) shore.  South Canadian military engineers considered it to be the biggest geographical obstacles in Europe, after the Normandy landings.  There is a reason why Germany begins after the River Rhine, as it was such an excellent defensive barrier. 

     The Teutons, very unsportingly, had demolished all the bridges across the Rhine (except one, a tale in itself).  This had been anticipated as early as August of 1944, when forward-planning for an assault crossing of the Rhine had begun in Allied HQs.

     Ol' Pete, by dint of hard work, accumulated a fair amount of statistical data, which I will now plunder* for the blog.  Plunder shamelessly.  Art!

     I am about to recite stats for the South Canadian Third Army, yes yes yes, those are British vehicles - that squat little tracked vehicle in the foreground is a Bren Gun Carrier, the British equivalent of a tracked Jeep - BUT it gives you an idea of the planking, girder framework and pontoon boats needed for a single bridge.  Plus there were dozens of bridges built, and do you think all that happened by accident?  No, Dougal, it did not.

     So, those stats.  By March the South Canadians had amassed:
 1,500 Assault boats.

300 Storm boats.

Boats.  Who knows which kind.  A boat is a boat.

15,000 paddles, because exercise is good

910 outboard motors, for those poor tired soldiers unable to paddle
11,000 foot of treadway bridge.  No, I don't know what it is either.  Art!

We are enlightened

7,000 feet of floating Bailey Bridge, as un-floating bridges are useless We have encountered the Bailey Bridge previously but another look at the largest Meccano set evah won't hurt.  Art!

     Ah!  I see.  Normally a Bailey Bridge was used to span rivers of much smaller dimensions than the Rhine, so no flotation aids were needed.  Thanks to the sheer breadth needed to span, it was essential for pontoons to be used.  Much clearer now.

2,200 feet of heavy pontoon bridge.  Art!

     Your Humble Scribe is guessing that this is a 'heavy' pontoon bridge, because it has a lot of pontoons (the boat-shaped articles), meaning it can take heavy loads such as tanks, which are pretty hefty beasts, tilting the scales at up to forty tons.  A well-consolidated bridge like this wouldn't need to have long intervals between any traffic using it.

     Now, as mentioned above, how do you think all this equipment turned up in the right quantity at the right time in the right location?

     Staff work, that's how, the most unglamourous job going in any armed force (apart from those on latrine duty), yet which is the essential oil to keep military logistics running smoothly.  Typewriters not tommy guns keep frontline soldiers in bullets and buns.  Behind all those thousands of tons of supplies will there will be scads of officers and NCOs hammering away at keyboards, using carbons and Gestetner machines.  Art!

     Not only that, the weather was really bad, with thaws, frosts, rain, snow and sleet making movement across country almost impossible, where the road surfaces broke up under the enormous amount of traffic moving into position, and all those essential engineering supplies needing to be moved 300 miles as the crow flies back and forth.  

     Okay, okay, okay, typewriters rather than pens, it's called poetic licence which means I'm right.  The end.

Dog Buns!

Conrad had an exceptionally tough tussle with a Codeword last night.  It took me thirty minutes to crack it, which is a shocking admission from Conrad the Codeword Conqueror.  Nor could I cheat and look in the next day's "M.E.N." because it had gone in the bin, after being used to soak up the beer I kicked over.  By accident, I assure you.  I also refuse to pay £1 for a 'hint' phone call.  Art!

     It was challenging enough that I resorted to the Crossword Key, and after I worked out PIXIE the rest fell into place.  Someone is going to pay for this!  I mean, DICHOTOMY and PIXELATED?  Really!

Hooray! Said Conrad, Evincing All The Cheer Of The Grinch

Another unpleasant by-product of snow in any quantity here in the hills sitting on top of hills is that everyone across the North West of England decides to come sledging in Tandle Hill Park.  This is because it has several very large slopes that make for excellent sledging, so the myriads turn up and clog the road with parked cars.  So - Art!

     I type this whilst staring into the darkness of a miserable December afternoon fully as horrid as my soul.  And you're welcome.

You What?

I've just witnessed a very interesting little video clip on Twitter, done in black and white, introduced by Sean Connery, about how Ian Fleming was persuaded to 'up' Bond's gun to a more suitable and man-stopping weapon.  Let me see if I can capture a couple of stills.  Art!

     Egad!  This is during the filming of "Goldfinger", which I have seen and - it's not Fort Knox?  All my illusions shattered!  Art?

     It is?  How can this be!  Conrad admits he's not gone into the location shooting schedule for this film, yet I was convinced it was a South Canadian location standing in for the real thing.  We may have to do a bit of digging on this subject and come back to it, so I've bookmarked the video clip.

Officially A Grumpy Old Codger

Darling Daughter turns 30 today, which is a bit of a shock.  She will now be forced to become 'zenzible' as the phrase around here has it, especially as she is now a house and mortgage owner.  Conrad's Facebook feed threw up a photo of this date on a previous occasion.  Art!

     This was for her 21st, at Robin Hood's Bay, all of nine years ago.  Yikes.  You can't see her but Edna is around somewhere here, as the guest house allowed pets, so no kennels for The Entitled One.  Yes, this is the venue where she initially raced up to the second storey and then lay quivering on the floor, as the stairs were too steep to get down.  O what memories.

Finally -

Here's one for the orcs.  No, we have no sense of decorum or taste.  Art!

*  Military in-joke there.  If you know, you know.

More Claw

I Missed A Trick

Whilst blathering on about Santa and his claws, there was a perfectly good source of content sitting out in the open, and I missed it until this afternoon, when the word "Claw" caught my attention.  Art!

     Yes, that's a Tyrannosaurus Rex, being ridden like a horse by young Cadet Dredd.  This bundle of stories features Ol' Stonyface when he was a mere Cadet, alongside his clone-brother Rico.  Rico is definitely the more personable of the two, and there are hints of how his character will lead him to -

     That would be telling.  Meanwhile, Art!

          More Law and Claw.  Thus far, not enough to - why a Cadet version of Dredd?  Because in the comics he's hitting about 70, having been around for 47 years in real time, and this is a way of coining it in with the 'pre-quel'.

     ANYWAY as I was saying, not enough material for an Intro, until I recollected one of the first trade paperbacks I saw that concerned either Dredd or "2000AD".  Art!

Dredd and his best friend

     No, Dredd has not travelled in time back to the age of dinosaurs.  That would be silly!  These are dinosaurs that have been created by scientists Meddling With What Man Ought Not To Muck Around With, or something, which is why they can exist in the 23rd century.  Obvs.  The cover artwork is by Mike McMahon, one of the biggest talents from the comic's early years, as is Brian Bolland, credited on the front cover.  

     What's going on here?  Welllll I can't detail the full story of "The Cursed Earth" because it ran for nearly six months, but Dredd and a party of Judges have been entrusted to carry a vaccine to Mega-City Two on the West Coast.  There, the 2T(fru)T (yes an horrendous pun) virus had caused the airports to be over-run by raging raving homicidal cannibalistic killers (do I get the point across?), so - no air delivery.  Art!

     Predating "Jurassic Park" by years, these dinosaurs are the descendants of the cloned population of an amusement park, and the purplish example you see above is 'Satanus', who tries to dine on Dredd.  Unsuccessfully.  You can tell McMahon enjoyed drawing dinos, because they crop up repeatedly.  Art!

More horns than claws, methinks.  Satanus was popular enough as a character, because teenaged boys are utter ghouls, to be brought back from the dead and even crops up in "Nemesis The Warlock".  Now, because Hom. Sap. are awful, and turning a profit is almost a religion in South Canada - yes, even in the Cursed Earth - you can bet your rad-proof boots that someone will try and make money from dinosaurs.  Art!

     These were modelled on a real dinosaur, 'Deinonychus' which is Greek for 'Terrible Claw', because they had two of 'em.  Art!

The ghost of Dog and Chicken look on with puzzlement

     Fending off a pack of savage dino predators is pretty wild, hmmmm?  Well, just imagine that more Meddling Scientists got hold of a large sample of Satanus' blood, and did not secure it properly.  That makes it their fault when one of their minor minions ponders aloud what would happen if someone drank that blood.

     Conrad is prettttty sure that, in real life (which is boring and usually avoided in comics) doing this would make you ill.  However, in "2000AD" - Art!

Art by Ron Smith

     Who knew that necking Tyrannosaur blood would have a truly terrifying transmogrification upon the hapless victim?  Art!

     Claws, talons or over-grown fingernails?  Take your pick.  Matey turns out to be a minor matter, as he's considerably smaller and more vulnerable than Satanus.
     We're not done yet, because Conrad remembers another story, artwork by Ron Smith, about a visiting attraction that arrives in the Big Meg, said attraction being - Art!

     In this story they lay a little flesh on the bones (cringy metaphor there) of the dinosaur's backstory, complete with a David Bellamy spoof to illustrate the exposition.  Art!

     In the cover picture you can see the dino being - ah - 'controlled' by an Obedience Collar, which is activated by a small hand-held remote.  Gosh, wouldn't it be awful if the batteries went flat or someone trod on it!

     Yeah yeah, huge slavering meat-eating monsters restrained by a collar.  What can possibly go wrong?
     We haven't even covered "Flesh" yet - a tale for another day.

     That went quite well, I wasn't sure there was enough material but we managed.

How The Black Sea Gets It's Name

You may recall BOOJUM! sitting in judgement on a couple of the orc's 'Shadow Fleet' of ancient oil tankers sinking in the Black Sea a couple of days ago.  The only surprise about this event is that it hasn't happened sooner.  Now a third one has sunk.  Art!

     The black gunk is crude oil and it's already washing ashore on Crimean beaches.  People on Twitter have been muttering darkly about eco-terrorism and where Greenpeace are?

     "NAFOViking", who seemed to know what he was talking about, said that these decades-old tankers are not allowed to sail by any reputable business nor country, as they do not have double-hulls.  This means any crack in the hull will propagate, likely dooming the ship.  A double-hulled construction means a breach is bad, yet fixable.  Art!

     It's winter on the - or is that 'in the'? - Black Sea, so you can expect storms, bad weather and high seas.  Thus if the Ruffians continue to send these rustingbuckets out, there may well be other losses, but they cannot afford to pause operations for two or three months.  Estimating their carrying capacity at circa 4,000 tons, that's 84,000 barrels lost and 12,000 tons capacity lost for future operations.

What's Not Wrong With This Picture?

Conrad was perusing the BBC News website, the font of all that's fit to be writ, and noted an absence.  Art!

     In case you can't read print that small, let me explain that there is NO coverage of the South Canadian feral fathead feeding frenzy about 'Drones' being seen at night near airports.

     This is because they are not drones, they are PLANES COMING IN TO LAND OR TAKING OFF.  It's not rocket science to associate airborne objects at airports to be airplanes, except apparently it is.

     I wrote above that Hom. Sap. are awful, and they are awfully stupid.  This level of painful drivel is about the same as the bafunes who were targeting 5G phone architecture because it controlled the chemtrails laid by Satanic bio-engineered mosquitoes.

Our Journey With Bernie

Wrightson, that is, the artist chap and his run of FPG cards.  Yes, I did my due diligence and #50, "Mausoleum" is present on teh Interwebz.  Art!

     Oooops.  Available, just not in high-definition.  I can confidently state that the first word in this note is "I" and that's it.  

     Conrad is unsure how the sinister skeletal creatures can sense the young lady, since they don't have eyes or ears.  I bet she goes up that ladder a lot faster than she came down it.  Or - perhaps she's the villainess of this piece and they're just startled and anxious? and will either scuttle off or offer her a cup of tea and a biscuit?