Me Three

You Will Be Delighted To Know That The Number Three Intro Continues

Just to give you an insight into the creative process that goes on behind the scenes here at BOOJUM! I was considering doing 'A Little Musical Critique', that po-faced literal interpretation of song lyrics, and targeting 'The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway', the title song of Genesis' epic 1974 concept double-album.  Art!

     There isn't much point in trying to make sense of the lyrics, as you need to be off your box on illegal substances to understand them.  So I deferred.

     THEN! there was the possibility of having Arnie Schickelbaum and his wife Gardenia relating their adventures, incorporating 16 Codeword solutions in the body of the tale, with definitions.  It may yet happen.  Art!

One of the solutions

     Instead, we're going to be continuing with the theme of 'Three', as evinced earlier in the week.  Instead of a long, long description of mythology and theology, let us begin with a bit of pop culture.  Art!

     The title refers to the three female leads tossing three coins into the Trevi Fountain in Rome and making a wish about their romantic destiny.  I note that there are two leading men in the title sequence, not three, so - draw your own conclusions.

     Let us now whistle up 'Brewer's' and begin explicating.

The Three Wise Monkeys: A carving of three monkeys over the Sacred Stable door in Japan circa the 17th century.  Art!

The Toshogu Shrine

     They are displaying the three attributes for a blameless life: hear no evil, speak no evil and see no evil, but surely there ought to be a fourth monkey covering his nose?  Also, they are about four hundred years adrift as they need another monkey abhoring a mobile phone: thou shalt not pass on unverified and unattributed info on social media.  Conrad unsure if we need a fifth member covering their tongue, since nobody has yet informed me if evil has a taste*.

The Three 'F's: No!  Nothing to do with swearing, you dirty-minded lubbers.  It is much more higher-minded than that.  We are talking about the Irish Land League of the 1880s, whom were Fenians attempting to overthrow absentee English landlords.  Art!

"Parnell led with his extremely aggressive beard"

     What they referred to was: Fair rent - nobody wants to pay scads for a hovel with no indoor plumbing or internet; free sale - erm unsure what this means but it sound really progressive and empowering <digs digs digs> aha, it means the tenant farmer can sell their holding to another without landlord retaliation; fixity of tenure - which means not being evicted for little or no reason, as long as the rent was paid.  Three 'F's.

THREE FIELD SYSTEM: O sweet lord aloft, I remember this phrase from secondary school, all of 50 years ago, when it got beaten into us as part of - History? because we definitely didn't have an 'Agriculture' O level.  'Beaten' as in inflicted through repetition, not that they actually thrashed us with bamboo switches.  A deficiency some teachers mourned. 

     ANYWAY Art!

     'Three-field system' meant a crop rotation arrangement, whereby arable fields were used sequentially for wheat, then the year after for barley or oats, and then in the third year they were left fallow, meaning left strictly alone in terms of farming, although cattle were allowed to graze on them, to prevent an irruption of weeds.  Doing this meant that land could recover after intensive farming, and it had the benefit of working for a good five hundred years.

And Then There Were Three: We go back to Genesis, an ironic line if ever there was one, for their 1978 album.  To elucidate a little, Genesis were originally a 5-piece band: Peter Gabriel, Phil Collins, Tony Banks, Steve Hackett and Mike Rutherford.  Peter left in 1975, and then Steve left in 1977.  So, what did they release in 1978?  Art!

     I remember a frustrated and hostile punk fan writing in to the 'NME' when the album was released, complaining 'And then there were three, and then there were two, and then there was one, and then there were none AND THEY WERE STILL MAKING MUSIC!"

     You may or may not like Genesis but you have to admit that's pretty amusing.

     Right, I think we can squeeze out at least another Intro dealing with Three, so we shall put this one to bed.  Please note that we have so far only touched on Nine and Three, and there are at least 8 other cardinal numbers to resort to.

The Wind Of Change

No, we are not talking about The Skorpions era-defining track concerning the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Sinister Union, which remains an incredibly catchy and powerful song ab

     ANYWAY AGAIN we are rather talking about how a wicked wind served to deliver up to King Piggy a rather unflattering photo.   Art!

The Hair Helmet seems to be gaining sentience and will soon be agitating for it's own security code.

Dock Lobster

No!  This is not about the B-52s, the sole South Canadian band as far as I know whom are named after a strategic bomber.  Art!

Band or bomber, which would I choose?

     Known as a 'BUFF' or 'Big Ugly Fat Feller', which sounds like a DJ Tango reference but which isn't, they pa

     ANYWAY AGAIN I am once again referring to 'Be Amazed' and their 'Most Expensive Mistakes In All Of History' Youtube vlog.  This particular tale of woe concerns the South Canadian seafood chain Red Lobster, and I've definitely heard this story before, so am unsure if we've posted about it.  I shall assume not.  Art!

     In 2003 RL offered an 'All The Crab You Can Eat' promotion, where customers for the low, low price of $23, could gorge themselves on as much Alaskan Snow Crab as they wished.  The company's accountants, who had plainly never dined on crab, reckoned that their diners would eat 2 plates of crab total.

     WRONG!  It was more like 4, and diners took their own sweet time eating the fiddly crab legs, which needed cracking and separating before they could be eaten, meaning less diners and more delay.  Not only that, the increased demand for Snow Crab Legs drove up prices and -

     

     

     Here are the losses for a single quarter.  

     It got worse.  Wall Street got wind of this farrago and detailed it in the press, at length, as an example of corporate stupidity, and knocked $400 million off Red Lobster's stock price.  So, even if they'd only lost $12 million across the year, the market rather rebounded against them by 33 times, effectively docking their income, hence today's title.

     Ooooops.

     That's what you get for not thinking things through.

Point And Laugh

Sorry to include a second photo of Fat Caligula, but this is an hilarious trend where one needs a wheelie-bin of popcorn to appreciate it.  Art!

     The World Cup is a football event being held in South Canada, and since Trump is involved, there were doubtless bribes doled out to get it held there.  The bald chap above - that is, the one without a Hair Helmet combover - is Infantino, whom delivered the bizarre FIFA 'Peace Cup' to DJ Tango, doubtless again to flatter him into concessions of some variety.

     One of the metrics to judge how successful an event is going to be is hotel room takeup, which is doing poorly for the WC.  Not surprising, considering that the hoteliers were trying to gouge fans with prices of $3,000 for rooms.  Then there is the requirement to submit your past social media for inspection, going back five years, and the ever-present risk of ICE shooting you dead for wearing a loud shirt.

     Donnie Dorko will, inevitably, declare that this is the bestest bigliest WC ever.  Art!

     Not wrong.

Finally -

One from Ambrose -

"Language,n: The music with which we charm the serpents guarding another's treasure."

*  Doubtless an hideous mixture of pineapple and parsnip.  Or is that just me?

The Baltic Ace Lacks Grace

Conrad Has Just Dug Up Another 'Be Amazed' Vlog

This one is 'The Most Expensive Mistakes In All History'  being the original that has spawned two successor vlogs, one of which we've partially covered.  The initial items cover the 'Deepwater Horizon' disaster, which we covered years ago, and the crash of a B2 stealth bomber, which lacks the kind of narrative depth I need for an Intro.

     So!  I am going for a story that I must have encountered in the media at the time yet which I completely forgot about.  Art!

     Here we have the MV 'Baltic Ace', built in Poland and operated by Ray Car Carriers of the Isle of Man.  It was constructed - you may be ahead of me here - to carry cars, eight decks of them, all lashed down to prevent movement during transit.  Art!

     I'm sure you wondered, like Conrad, how they got the cars on board when there are no hatches on the top deck.  Through two giant roll-on roll-off ramps at the stern, which I have helpfully illustrated above, and you're welcome.  With good drivers and careful parking, they could fit 2,132 cars into this floating allotment.  Presumably those were smaller cars, as on this occasion there were 1,400 Mitsubishis on board.  Art!

     This is the 'Corvus J', a Teuton-constructed Cypriot-owned freight vessel.  If I were a better blogger, I'd give you statistics about how long both ships were and what tonnage and their respective captain's inside leg measurements, etcetera etcetera.  But I won't. 

     ANYWAY actually I will, as I've just come across a very interesting investigative document from Cypriot Department Of Merchant Shipping.  The BA, it seems, came in at almost 4 times the mass of the CJ, being 23,498 tons versus 6,370.

     On the night of December 5th 2012, with high seas and poor visibility, the two ships collided 39 miles off the Dutch coast.  The Corvus J remained intact and upright, but the Baltic Ace suffered catastrophic hull damage and capsized within 15 minutes, killing 11 crewmen.  6 of their bodies were never recovered, with the other 13 survivors being rescued by the Corvus J and the Dutch Coast Guard.  Art!

Corvus Jehosophat

     That's the collision site, which is near the eastern end of the English Channel, one of the busiest and most constricted marine routes across the globe, meaning it was a major shipping hazard, not to mention a pollution risk.

     Ooops.

     Such a peril could not be allowed to bother the burghers of Bruges, or the denizens of Delft, nor the natives of Norfolk, so a salvage operation was mounted in March of 2014.  Art!

     BA makes a major flub here, calling this a 'company'.  It's not, as the word 'Rijk-' gives the game away, being Dutch for 'State'.  This is the Netherlands Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management, whom engaged two Dutch firms to carry out salvage operations.  Art!

     You may be unsurprised to know that 'Mammoet' is Dutch for 'Mammoth'.  The marque gives it away.  They maintain some ENORMOUS kit for marine salvage work, which must cost tens of thousands of Euros per day to hire.  I did do a quick dig on the subject, but Mammoet advise they treat costs on a case-specific index.  I did note -

- specialized salvage operations often scale to the millions of dollars depending on the complexity of the wreck or recovery

     We'll come back to that.

     Step One: remove 540,000 litres of fuel oil from the BA's tanks, which seem to have been constructed by Polish craftsmen who were the children of Polish craftsmen, as the North Sea remained pollution-free.  Art!

     There then begins an operation to salve the BA by cutting it apart underwater into 8 pieces and retrieving each enormous piece of scrap metal individually.  Art!

     Sorry I don't have any puny humans to scale this, but what you're seeing here is the removal of relatively small debris from the wreck site.   I can show you another still with various car debris scattered around.  Art!

     That gives you an idea how absolutely mahoosive these salvage vessels are, and the chunks of BA that they were bringing up to the surface.  Art!

     The the bill became due.  Art!

     The cost of the salvage alone.  Art!

     Sorry to mix currencies.  This is how much the BA cost to construct.  Art!

     Here we have the Corvus J repair bill.  Seems a bit high to me for a bit of bow damage but I am not a marine insurance regulator, so what do I know?  Art!

     All those Mitsubishis that never got a forever home.  There's no mention of the missing bodies so I must assume that none were found, which rather interrupts the sense of closure.  Art!

     Ooooh that's expensive.

     And do you know what?  That Cypriot forensic examination worked out that the collision itself was down to human error, and that if both bridge crews had been paying attention and communicating properly, it would not have happened.

I Remember THIS

As you should surely know by now, Conrad has a somewhat ghoulish interest in the structural failure and collapse of dams.  If this happens in daylight there is a safety factor where people can see what's going on and evacuate.

     Not so at night.  Here is an item brought up on my news feed.  Art!

     When they say 'tallest' they mean a dam constructed at the highest elevation in Europe.  What you see here is the Vajont Dam in Italy.  It was constructed in the Dolomites, which are a mountain range, because in hydroelectricity height = power.  Their hydrostatic analysis was sorely lacking, because the mountainside next to the dam's lake was frangible and slid into the lake on 09/10/1963.  Art!

     Here is the dam at completion.  Note the large lake made of water, as lakes are intended to be.  Art!

     The terrain behind the dam, as it is today.  No trace of lake to be seen.

     It was a disaster of epic proportions, with a death toll to boot.  There is no exact definition but the most widely-accepted total is 1,190.  This is the kind of total you get when engineers eff up their calculations..

Wow, rather dark as of so far.  I think we need a bit of cheering up!

Rather More Pleasant Yet Less Of A Pheasant

A pheasant in terms of 'What The Pluck' as we are still SFW on the blog.  Art!

     I am guessing that Yuka Iguchi is Japanese and she is publishing a book called 'Le Chouchou', yet what 'Tokyo News Mook' is remains unclear.  Possibly the medium under which this story is being told.  None of which explains who Yuka Iguchi is nor what her life story is about.

     Conrad baffled.  Logarithm demented.

Angry Birds, Ukrainian Edition

Skip if you're a big fan of Putinpot or the orc regime.  Or even a small fan of them.

     One of the most significant drone strikes that the Kozaky have carried out was over the 16th and 17th of May, when they gave Badad Duh, the Mordorvian capital - I hope Ol' Tolky isn't spinning in his grave at 33 RPM with my usage of his verbiage as insults - a thorough pounding.  The orcs were both angry and terrified.  Art!

     Here you see x6 Kozaky drone streams, heading out in 6 different directions to the total of 107 arrows, which may include multiple strike teams in a single arrow.  We may get to see the end results on 'Jake Broe' in a couple of days yet; he tends to put up compilations of official Kozaky Firepoint drone videos.  The thing is, the orcs cannot mass enough air defences to counter these drones especially as the drones focus on air defences.  There seems to be a lesson in there somewhere.

Finally -

Rocking out with the crown prince of horribleness, A G Bierce -

"Imagination,n: A warehouse of facts, with the poet and liar in joint company."

If I Were To Say 'Sewer'

You'd Immediately Hit Trouble

Since this is text and you can't hear how I pronounce it.  For all you know, I'm referencing the end of 'Help!' where the end credits put in a complete non sequiteur compared to the rest of the film - Art!

     One type of sewer <disappears to dig a bit> ah yes, the reason the name 'Singer' is on that machine is because, whilst Howe came up with the patented design, it was Isaac Singer who added a few tweaks and made it commercially successful.

     Incidentally, we've covered this film before, as it features scads of Centurion tanks, which is reason enough to add in another illo.  Art!

     Conrad is unsure the ambient nose of 40-ton main battle tanks whizzing around would enhance a recording but what do I know.

     ANYWAY what we are talking about today is not the machinery to carry out lockstitch but what my 'Collins Concise English Dictionary' defines as "A drain or pipe, especially one that is underground, used to carry away surface water or sewage."  The word itself derives from the Old French 'Esseveur', meaning 'To drain' and it probably has a Latin root <hack spit> but I don't care enough to find out.  Art!

     Sewers are set at a particular angle, in order to create a slope that maintains a flow of sewage that prevents clogs or build-ups of solid waste.  Gravity is free, after all.  Then there is the heirarchy of sewers.  You have 'laterals', which are small-bore pipes carrying sewage from individual homes; 'branches' are the larger versions running along main streets, carrying the sewage from multiple laterals; 'trunks' consolidate several branches into a single, very large sewer - see picture above.

     Having established the background, let us now venture forth into the body of today's Intro, one from the 'Slash Start' Youtube channel.  Let me introduce the narrator, SEWage Shifter, hereafter SEWS.  His mission in service to City Hall was to haul his big truck around to various domestic customers, then use the 600 gallon water tank and compressor to destroy whatever was clogging the lateral.  Art!

     SEWS secret weapon in his never-ending battle against fatbergs and baby wipes was the Call History function of his phone database.  Thus, when a call came in about a clogged lateral, he was able to check the callers background history.  We shall dub them Abusive Sewer Spoliator, hereafter ASS.  They were on record as being severely chastised for flushing cotton hand towels down the toilet and causing clogs that way, which takes an extra-special dose of stupid to manage.  Who on earth sits down and thinks 'I must get rid of this towel, not in the bin but down the toilet'?

     ANYWAY AGAIN when SEWS and his workmate arrive at ASS's house, what do they behold outside but a councillor from City Hall, as ASS is a relative of theirs.  Oooops.  Art!

     

      SEWS and partner check what he called the 'city cleanout', which is a vertical shaft allowing access to the lateral, close to the branch sewer.  There was no standing water, meaning no blockage at that point in the system.  

     Technically, this was where SEWS had fully discharged their duty.  However - a word you surely knew was coming - the councillor is unhappy with this and insists they examine further up the lateral, yeah unto ASS's house.

     SEWS informs that, if they do that, ASS has to sign a waiver about any resultant damage, and he needs permission from his manager.  The councillor in turn harasses the manager via phone, threatening storms, plagues of frogs, spoiled milk and so on.  Art!

     Problem is, they cannot find the domestic cleanout, which is very probably under ASS's new porch.  So instead SEWS has to run a line up the lateral from the branch sewer, using the 600 gallons of stored water propelled at high speed to destroy any clogs in the lateral.  First, SEWS got ASS, who was outside watching them,  to sign the waiver, which was the most important part of the job.

     The tanked water gets shot in at 4,000 PSI, which destroys the clog and also ASS's bathroom as her toilet explodes.  She goes mental, to which SEWS responds that she signed the waiver, so there's nothing she can do.  As for the councillor, he was on record, as all the manager's calls were recorded, as ordering the lateral to be blasted.  Art!

     SEWS manager, a canny and crafty individual, took many copies of the waiver form and handed them out at the next City Hall meeting, which quashed any problems about ASS and their councillor relative.

More Of Mordorvia's Malleting

I am referring to 'Professor Gerdes Explains' and his Youtube channel, where he covers the Special Idiotic Operation, and the latest iteration is titled 'The Moscow Attack Was Worse Than Ruffia Admitted'.  What do you think of that, Mordorvia being untruthful?  Art!

     Those blue dots are the targets that the Ukrainian drones hit on the 16th and 17th of May.  This is significant because it means the drones got through four layers of air defences around Barad Duh.  Art!

     It's unclear if the orcs have redistributed their SAM systems around Moscow now that the Victory Charade is done with, or if they're keeping everything around the capital.

     The Prof also mentions Prez Zed quoting in the press about how badly things are going for Mordorvia in terms of their economy, quoting 'RBC News'.  First thing mentioned is that an orc oil company has shut down 400 oil wells, which is a serious step.  As Prez Zed explains, shutting down an oil well in Siberia gets verrrry risky as one draws close to winter, because the oil solidifies and turns to jelly, expanding as it does so.  This destroys the well, the pump and the pipeline altogether and has happened already, in the aftermath of the Sinister Union going toes-up.  Art!

     The Prof also went into the statistics of the latest wave of drone and missile attacks the orcs inflicted on Ukraine, using a Kozaky chart.  Art!

     As you can see from the totals, the orcs launched 546 drones and missiles, of which 507 were successfully intercepted and shot down.  This is a corking shoot-down rate of 93%

We Three

Today's Intro

Is all about numbers, but not nine: I've moved on from there and today we are going to be looking at the number Three, which is why I've just capitalised it.  In fact I just had to go back and embolden the title by clicking on it three times.  How poetic is that!  Even though I hate poetry.  And maths makes my head hurt.  Art!

     If you have any complaints about novelty or creativity, never forget that the Remote Nuclear Tormentor stands ever ready to inflict hideous pain on ungrateful readers.  I mean, it's not as if you pay to read this scrivel, is it?

     ANYWAY here we go.  

     Three has all sorts of associations with theology, especially in Christianity and the Holy Trinity.  Man, and also woman, was believed to exist as a threefold entity: mind, body and spirit.  The three principal Christian values were held to be Faith, Hope and Charity - cue that hilarious skit in 'Red Dwarf'  and yes that makes me a terrible person.  The three principal evils were: the world, the flesh and the Devil.  No mention of mobile phones or pineapples.  Art!

     I shudder to include the Barf Of Avon here, or indeed anywhere, but I got 'Macbeth' dinned into me so much for 'O' levels that it's hard to forget.  What does Ol' Macky get up to on the blasted moor?  Why, he goes to consult with a trio of witches, who asked the question:

"When shall we three meet again,

In thunder, lightning or in rain."

     Given that this is Britain we're talking about, Rain is a 99% chance.  Art!

     Get ready for a whole lot of Roman mythology.  It held that the world was divided into three parts: Jupiter ruled the heavens, Neptune ruled the sea and Pluto bossed it over Hades.  Prior to that, Pythagoras believed that Three held power since it constituted a beginning, middle and end in as elegant a way as possible.  Art!

Ol' Py face

     Those three gods were variously equipped with triple accoutrements.  Jupiter had triple lightning bolts, Neptune had a trident (Latin for 'three teeth') and Pluto had a three-headed dog.  Vet fees must have been exorbitant.

     There are other Roman triples.  They had three Fates, whose job it was to monitor the birth, life and death of everyone.  I wonder what their job spec said about working hours?  ANYWAY they were Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos, the last of whom inspired 'Atropine'.  Art!

     Whilst the Fates might be held as dispassionate, the Furies were another ball game entirely.  Their origin is disputed; their modus operandi is not, since they were utterly ruthless punishers of those who merited vengeance being visited upon them.  Even being dead didn't stop their punishment, which seems a bit harsh to me.  Being in Hades is punishment enough.  ANYWAY AGAIN they were Tisiphone, the 'Avenger of Blood'; Alecto 'The Implacable'; Megaera 'The Jealous', which last may be the origin of the 'Green eyed monster' aphorism.  Art!

     Counterbalancing these three termagants, there were also three Graces: Aglaia, Thalia and Euphrosyne.  They were responsible for bestowing charm and beauty upon humans and represented both qualities to the utmost.  Art!

     A lot easier on the eye than the Furies, I'm sure you'll agree, unless you have a fetish for bat wings.  

     Carrying on with the theme of three females with wings, we now come to the three Harpies.  They were Aello, Celeno and Ocypete, and they were not lookers.  Not at all.  Art!

     I know, I know, there's only two of them, but it's really difficult to find pictures that are SFW.  They were creatures of disgusting habits, filth and squalor who befouled their general environment, and doubtless passed the port to the right, the swines.  They seem to have a bit of a job overlap with the Furies, as they were sent to molest wrongdoers as a form of divine punishment, so if you were reallllly evil you might get a Fury/Harpy tag team on your glutes.  They were also associated with storms.

     You know which region was never conquered by Rome?  Scandinavia, which is my tenuous link to Norse mythology and Asgard.  There were a trio of gods there dubbed 'The Mysterious Three', which sounds like an Eighties synth-rock band.  I shall explicate them.  Har, which means 'High' in Norse; Jafenhar, which means 'Equally High' and Thridi, meaning - you may be ahead of me here - 'Third'.  Art!

The Mysterons

     Enough of mythology and theology!  Let us proceed with something very material and concrete.

The Three Sisters: you might expect this to be about the Furies or Harpies but NO!  This is the nickname given to three White Star liners laid down early in the twentieth century, one of which you will be familiar with.  They were: RMS 'Olympic', RMS 'Brittanic' and RMS 'Titanic'.  Told you that one would be familiar.  Art!

   

Are You Hungary For More?

The new broom of Peter Magyar continues to sweep clean in Hungary.  So much so that the corrupt elite who clustered around Orban The Weretoad are now  worried about possible confiscation of their ill-gotten goodies.  Art!

     These expensive private jets belong to the Weretoad's dirty, dirty associates and are parked up at the Viennese airport, because if they land at Budapest they are highly likely to be seized and held.  Since the cheapest one of them costs $18 million the risk is not worth it.  Poor money-grubbers, they then have to travel across Austria to access home.

     Magyar also called in the Mordorvian ambassador to shout at him about recent orc drone strikes into the Hungarian-speaking areas of Ukraine close to the Magyar border.  These areas used to be off-limits under Orban as he had been promised them when Ruffia successfully conquered Ukraine.  Which isn't happening any longer.  Art!

As Threatened

Your Humble Scribe has been making noises about doing another All-English Breakfast Pizza again, and using an extra-large base to accommodate more toppings.  Art!

     Sausages, bacon, mushroom and a fried egg centrepiece; I don't like fried tomatoes and baked beans would have rendered it too soggy.  It was too massive to eat in one go, so the other half is back in the fridge to be eaten later this week.

More Ungentle Shoeing

There is some controversy about the veracity of the photo I am about to put up as an illo, with people claiming it's been Photoshopped and others claiming it's entirely genuine.  Whichever is true, it's ghastly picture of the the Big Orange Oaf Himself.  Art!

     He reminds me of a film alien, except gin and old age conspire to prevent me recalling which one.  I may have to Google 'squinty-eyed alien' and see what comes up.  Art!

     Not the one I was thinking of but will do as a placeholder until I get it right.

Progress Report

I have just started another book from my Book Mountain, namely "21 Days In Normandy" by one Angelo Caravaggio.  Art!

     The titular 21 days are how long Major General Kitching lasted in Normandy as OC of the Canuckistanian 4th Armoured Division, before he got sacked for lacking enough 'drive' to close the Falaise Pocket and thus allowing scads of Teutons to escape captivity.  Ol' Al has taken it upon himself to look rather deeper into this matter than the usual passing snide comments and acceptance of prior judgements.  He also mentions Professor John Buckley's 'British Armour In The Normandy Campaign' which earned him a loud 'Hurrah!' and 50 brownie points.
     I'm only 12 pages in and there are 200 to go with 19 (!) Appendices.  I shall let you know how I get on.

Finally - 

Going out with another Biercism.

"Defame, v: To lie about another.  To tell the truth about another."