From Van To Ram

I Want To Continue The Saga Of Chad Wannabe And His Younger Brother

No-Chrysler-4-Me.  At the conclusion of the second part of this story, CW had dropped the asking price for his money-pit Dodge Ram, and sold it for $1,500 to someone who was probably going to break it up and use it for parts.  He blamed NC4M for not stopping him from purchasing the Ram - which his younger brother had indeed warned him about, except there was no denying a man desperate for a MAN TRUCK.  Art!

MAN TRUCK!

     CW's ex had donated him her old Ford minivan out of pity, but CW hated it as it was a CHICK CAR.  It had 200,000 miles on the clock, was covered in dents, had a poor paint scheme and the rear window had been replaced with a bit of plastic.  

     As before, CW went to his parents to beg for money; he got rejected and they rang NC4M to warn him that CW was going to approach with hand outstretched, having got the idea in their head that they were going to convert the minivan into a MAN TRUCK.  Art!

     Despite still owing NC4M $400, CW wants to scrounge money off him for this conversion, having done a bit of Googling into doing the work.  NC4M gives him money - Art!

     There was $30 worth of change in it, which CW took despite glaring swords, axes and daggers at his brother.  

     What followed was related to NC4M by other people as he wanted nothing to do with his demented sibling or his conversion project.  Using an electric saw - Art!

     - I like to keep you informed - he cut the back off the minivan from behind the front seats.  The ex was not impressed since getting rid of the back seats meant their daughter wouldn't be able to be carried in her booster seat; it's illegal to transport a minor in the front seats, just so we're clear.  CW then wanted to cut the minivan exhaust and 'straight pipe it into stacks', which metalhead argot needs translating:

A straight-piped exhaust system into stacks means removing all the factory sound-deadening and emission restrictions (like mufflers and catalytic converters) and routing the open exhaust tubing vertically up behind the cab of a truck
 Art!

     This plan was stopped before it started when CW was told it was illegal and the cops would pull him over the instant they spotted him.

     Nevertheless he set to with a will, using junkyard parts, recycled wood, scrap metal, spray paint, hot glue and spray foam.  Art!

     Displaying considerable technical skill, CW built a sub-frame behind the front seats, then welded the rear doors shut to retain structural integrity, added in a wooden truck bed and - more argot - 'lifted it with twist studs in the coil springs'.  Art!

Coil springs

     He also added a tube frame behind the front seats, hung a lot of ratty LEDs off it, and the totality of all these changes and conversions implies that CW could have done-up his Ram and camper absent the help of NC4M.  The camper makes a reappearance here since CW was able to tow it with what he dubbed the 'Mini-Ram', having added a Ram emblem to the front grill.  It was now a MAN TRUCK! or not, as, NC4M fell about laughing when CW proudly drove it to a family dinner.  Their father, a tow-truck driver of 30 years, cautioned that he ought to be careful not to crack an axle or blow a gasket, at which his idiot elder son sneered.  Unwisely.  Art!

MAN CAR!

     Not satisfied with being mocked by his entire family, CW then got hold of two huge 18-wheeler wing mirrors and added them to his frankentruck with self-tapping screws and hot glue.  Next he wanted a drag race with NC4M, whom refused point-blank. Wisely - the drag race in his Ram blew the head gasket. 

     That's the saga of CW and his 'Mini-Ram' done.  There is a lot more to this story, but the car conversions are complete.  Don't forget, CW hated hated hated his brother to upstage him in any way, especially in front of witnesses, and both of them had campers.

Happy Chilling People

By which I mean the 'Flavour Trips' duo.  Art!

     Since Amii is wearing more than her usual wisp of chiffon, Conrad suspects it's a bit nippy here, even if it is bright.  They are in Greece, inside the walls of a fortification of some description.  Aha!  Apparently it's Larissa Castle, on the island of Argos.  Now we know and you're welcome.

Flight, Fright Or Fight

Continuing with more shots of the collections at Duxford.  Last time we had been travelling in the belly of the Concorde.  Art!

     That's Sal and Tom exiting Concorde, and an elevated look at the Vulcan, Harrier and Lightning.  Art!

     A brace of aircraft cannons, 20 mm by the look of them.  If you look at the wings of any Spitfire IV onwards, you'll see a streamlined fairing on the upper part, which is there to accommodate the ammunition drum of the cannons they mounted.  20 mm cannon shells were large enough to add interesting things to them, such as high explosive, an armour-piercing core or incendiary filling.  Art!

     No, they are not super bedside lamps, they are photograph processing units.  They took the film from cameras in Photographic Reconnaissance Unit Spitfires or Mosquitoes and processed it as rapidly as possible, to enable timely use to be made of them.  Art!

     Or, as in this case, the camera pod from a Tornado or similar.  Art!

     One of the bad guys.  This is a Mig-21, Cold War vintage fighter.  I think some are still in use in nations that don't have much of a defence budget.  They were pretty slick in the Sixties and Seventies but are old and tired now.  I think this one was generously donated by Hungary after they joined NATO.

Droopy Is Loopy

And, of course - obviously! - poopy.  There has been a lot of speculation about the senile old orange-face, especially about his peculiar stance as of late.  Art!

     Then another Tweet on the hell-platform Twitter put up a rather telling explanation and picture.  Art!

Suzie rizzio

@Suzierizzo1

·

Oct 3

It’s become obvious that Trump is using a Functional Electric Stimulation (Neuroprosthetics) device on his right leg after a stroke last year. They help lift the foot & improve walking. These devices have a sensor you can tap on your leg to make it lift your foot & move.

     DJ Tango will never admit to having used one of these as it makes him seem feeble and unmanly, but he's going to need two of them if he intends to hold true to his claim about campaigning in 35 districts before the mid-terms.  Plus he'll have to be taking Adderall by the fistful in order to not, you know, keel over dead.

     O and I have another awful photo of King Piggy for you.  Art!

     From neck-vajayjay to neck-rectum.  Plus you can totally see underneath his Hair Helmet and how bald he is.

     Sorry if you can't unsee this*.

South Canadian Circus In Full Swing

I can skirt our avoidance of Politics by claiming that it's entertainment over there, as they spend enormous sums of money on pushing their particular point of view, often lambasting their opponents rather than promoting themselves, and yes this applies to the Ice Cream Bandits and the Wizard Lizard Gizzard parties equally.

     Take the race for the Senate seat in Texas as an example.  Normally Texas would be a safe Red seat.  Not this year.  Art!

     The incumbent, Ken Paxton, who is dirtier than a herd of pigs running amok in a sewage site.  His polling figures have gotten worse, despite his party spending $100 million on his campaign, and they have now stopped spending anything on him, deeming the race to be lost.  One wonders if impeachments will follow November 3rd.  I need to lay in a lot of popcorn.

     and we're done!

*  Not sorry in reality.

As You Should Surely Know -

Conrad Is A Jaded Cynical Empiricist

'Trust but verify' is my default.  So, I had 'Save To Watch Later' a Youtube from 'Daily Dose Of Reddit', concerning the poster 'RK93' and their tale of 'Slumlord Lost His Business Over A $300 Security Deposit'.  When I went over it and annotated, various questionable things caught my eye.  Art!

This comes into play later

     I shall deal with these Questionable Things in due course.  How long will this Intro be?  I have no idea; it took up a good page-and-a-half of A4 notes, so we'll see.  As usual, RK omitted any mention of placenames or dates or even which South Canadian state he was in, nor could I find any supporting or detracting statements on teh Interwebz.

     SO! RK, wife and new-born moved into a small, dirty and badly-maintained house that was rented out by PAinting Business Litigious Owner, hereafter PABLO.  Given the state of it, the security deposit was only $300.  The HVAC did not work, nor did the fridge or dishwasher.  RK and fam didn't have much money, hence the move.  He paints a picture of PABLO's personality, and it's safe to say it is verrrry unpleasant; when asked to make repairs he would swear or leave threatening voicemails, as well as turning up at random and letting himself in.  This is illegal; a landlord has to give at least 24 hours notice before entering a renter's property.  Art!

     On one of these intrusive visits RK pointed to the flooded crawlspace, which bred mosquitoes and cockroaches by the thousand, that then infested the house above.  Typically, PABLO blamed RK for the flooding when it was actually from piping that had rusted through.  His response was for them to move out because 'You can't pay for a bargain and expect to live in the Ritz'.  Art!

     Other facets of PABLO's charming personality were not paying someone who spent all day felling trees, punching a neighbour in the face and renting squalid properties to illegals, since they didn't dare complain.  A peach of a person.

     Taking his advice, they moved out and PABLO said he would mail them the security deposit.  Plot twist: he didn't.  He dodged RK's phone calls and eventually responded 'You aren't getting it back.  You broke the contract when you left early, so go <swear> yourself.'

     Here Conrad would like to add that this is nonsense.  RK could have gotten the deposit back by sending a formal letter to PABLO, and if it wasn't returned, could have taken him to the small claims court.  There is no mention of him reporting PABLO to the city's enforcement authority, who would have come down on him and his 15 properties like an anvil from a mile up.  Conrad, being a vindictive soul, would also have informed the Internal Revenue Service via their whistle-blower hotline that PABLO was fiddling his taxes, since a bottomhole like him most definitely would be.  Art!

The marque that evildoers fear

     In the follow-up to this, RK was attempting to post a negative review of PABLO when he noticed that his business's website domain had lapsed.  We can presume RK had a certain degree of familiarity with web domains and design, since he immediately bought the domain.

     Aha!  Here he drops the information that the platform was GoDaddy and the year was 2013.  No surprise I couldn't find information about a cold case 13 years old.

     ANYWAY AGAIN RK added a homepage to the website, with contact details - 

     For PABLO's principal competitor.  He then e-mailed PABLO, asking if he wanted to buy his old domain back for $320 - that security deposit and the cost of acquiring the website.  Predictably the bottomhole exhibited prime bottomhole behaviour, ringing to threaten RK, then his parents, then his employer, then sending threats via voicemail.

     He refused to pay.

     Consequently, the website's contact details didn't get updated, continuing to divert customers to the competitor.

     Let Conrad The Jaded Cynic pronounce judgement here.  What happened up to this point is credible.  What follows is considerably less so.  Art!

'Bottomhole painting business' courtesy AI Art Generator

     RK got e-mails from people interesting in contracting with PABLO, sending one to his ex-landlord to prove that he's getting potential customers.

     Here the question must be why PABLO didn't just get another website?  There's no explanation in the narrative, unless pride and stupidity and the intellect of a house-brick explain it away.

     ANYWAY ANYWAY the ex-landlord rang, threatening to take RK to court, to the retort that the ex-tenant had recorded the threatening phone calls and retained the threatening texts and voicemails, and would countersue to press charges.

     This is very much an empty threat.  RK had done nothing illegal in buying the domain; it was his and he could do what he liked with it.  Also, if PABLO was stupid enough to go to court - a process that would involve more like $3,000 than $300 - there would be discovery, where RK would be able to demand access to his business accounts, which PABLO could absolutely not allow to happen.  Once again Conrad asks why he didn't just create a new website?  Except that's not a satisfying revenge, is it?  Art!

     A Remote Nuclear Tormentor, as no blog is complete without one.

     ANYWAY AGAIN AGAIN of course - obviously! - PABLO rang RK in gradually increasing stages of panic and rage, with RK hanging up on him.  After 6 months PABLO rings and begs for the website back as he's not had any custom for said 6 months.  RK acidly comments 'You need to create a website to find business'.

     WELL WHY DIDN'T HE!

     After another alleged 6 months - a year without bothering to create a new website is a timeline I find impossible to believe - PABLO calls back only to find that the cost is now $350 as a 'bottomhole tax' was being added.

     After another 6 months PABLO calls to beg for the site back, only to be told the cost is now $380 - see above for reasons.

     Eventually PABLO texts RK to inform that the painting business has now gone out of business and he hopes he's happy about that.   RK's response it to once again offer the domain name - for $380.  Art!

     So, we are asked to believe that PABLO sat and twiddled his thumbs for a year and a half, bleeding money all the time and refused to pay RK $380 to avoid bankruptcy?  I think that strains credibility to it's breaking point.

     That was the last contact PABLO ever had with RK, whom maintained the domain name for another 2 years just to be certain that PABLO had, indeed, gone out of business.  When he checked 'major business listing sites' there was no mention of his ex-landlord's business, presumably backing up the 'gone out of business' narrative.  Note that at no point in this story are we told what the domain or business name is, since that would allow it's veracity to be checked.

     Finally, RK took care to drive by 'the office', presumably where PABLO had worked from, to find it closed with a 'For Rent' sign up.  Art!

     In Conrad's humble opinion, which, given that this is my blog and my opinion matters more than yours, RK did indeed purchase the domain name and divert a lot of customers away from PABLO, who then got a new website and domain, having suffered a lot more than $320 in losses; but they didn't go out of business.

     Thus the moral of the tale is more 'Cannot confirm' rather than 'Trust but verify'.

     And with that, we are done!

A Full-English Breakfast Pizza Is Filling

So Much So I Only Ate Half Of It

I like to keep you informed.  Mind you, it means that I've now got reheated pizza as a lunch option, and pizza always tastes better second time around.  I am unsure if I'll go for the Baked Bean And Strawberry pizza that 'NAFOViking' illustrated; I wouldn't put it past him to have actually had such an item since he has the stomach of an industrial waste-processing plant.

     ANYWAY keep an eye open for the word 'пелікан' ('Pelikan') cropping up in the news a few weeks from now.   No, I shan't explain.  Cryptic, that's me. Art!

"Atomic Robot Pelican Demon"

     That said, onto the Links.

2025

BOOJUM!: It's Raining Men-

2024

BOOJUM!: Like A Bridge Over Rubbled Waters

2023

BOOJUM!: The Opposite Of Serendipity

2022

BOOJUM!: Flying High

2021

BOOJUM!: What The Heck, Jane Kaczmarek!

2020

BOOJUM!: If I Were To Mention Huge Ants And The Desert -

2019

BOOJUM!: Sitting In A Hot Seat

2018

BOOJUM!: On The Scene -

2017

BOOJUM!: Rated PG Tips

2016

BOOJUM!: Red Onion Chutney!

2015

BOOJUM!: The Evil John Dory Of Tobermory!

2014

BOOJUM!: Great Minds Or Folie A Deux?

2013

BOOJUM!: BOOJUM! - Powered by Marmite and (Stale) Bread

Breshy, Chuvak!

Which Is, Of Course - Obviously! - Ukrainian For 'Lie, Man'

We're going to be covering the second part of an interview 'Preston Stewart' did with Sergeant John 'Jack' Roberts, whom serves in the Ukrainian 3rd Army Corps, with a few additions thrown in by Your Humble Scribe for extra illumination, concerning Operation Vivaldi.

     Make no mistake about it, the orcs in the Lyman area have been given a proper shoeing, to use a technical military phrase.  Art!

Attack of the killer wheelbarrows

     Jack described the operation as resembling an avalanche, beginning small and getting increasingly larger week by week.  In fact he compared it to an attack during the First Unpleasantness, but with much greater ranges involved.  As per the above, UGVs (Ukrainian Gun Victimiser) were air-dropped by large 'Vampire' drones well behind orc lines, forcing the minions of Mordorvia to fight them, creating utter chaos and diverting attention away from the assaulting Ukrainian infantry.  Because, as Prez very aptly put it, they have no idea if an 'Exploding robot' UGV is 1 of 1, 1 of 20 or 1 of 500.  Art!

Caption courtesy of Anton Geraschenko

     These particular killer wheelbarrows were equipped with two rocket launchers, which they used to keep the orc's heads down, so they could get close and explode.  Rather scary stuff and evidence of how modern warfare is going; very much the way of British doctrine in the Second Unpleasantness - 'Steel not flesh'.  

     Prez then addressed one of the key facts that is crippling Ruffian military efforts; they don't report the real situation on the front line.  John scornfully retorted that, according to Ruffian figures, everyone in Ukraine has died three times over, and, another crippling factor, they have a BAD mission command system.  To quote him, "They misreport and lie all the time" and you could hear the naked contempt dripping from his words.  Prez agreed with the example of Kupiansk, which Putinpot probably thinks they still hold, but which fell to the Kozaky months ago.  Art!

     The blue parts are the territory Ruffia has conquered in 2026, at the cost of 400,000 casualties.  One reason for this is, as Jack explained, that there is no 'Contact Line' any more.  It's now a 'Contact Zone' 30 kilometres deep.

     "How do you track changes on a map?" asked Prez.

     Jack, careful not to give away details, explained that whilst it might be messy for OSINT trackers - people like you and I whom are not in the military - it was fairly easy for the Ukrainian army, because they report in an accurate and timely manner up the chain of command.  UNLIKE THE RUFFIANS is what he thought yet did not say.

     Another hearken back to the First Unpleasantness was Jack's mention of 'American elastic defence' which is actually the Teuton adoption of multiple lines of defence, rather than a single massive one.  

     Talking of which, I need to mention that the canny French in the First Unpleasantness came up with possibly the first UGVs in history.  Art!

     You've never heard of them before as they weren't very successful.  The Ukrainians came up with another first during Vivaldi; they took an old BTR eight-wheeled armoured personnel carrier and - Art!

     Stuffed it full of anti-tank mines - which they don't need as the orcs ran out of tanks - and added in remote controls, then sped it at Ruffian lines.  Art!

Note how far away the orc lines are

     The orcs were caught napping and failed to notice, much less stop, the oncoming BTR, which went up in a very large explosion.  Art!

     Other important factors Jack pointed out were that the Ukrainian 3rd Assault Corps was significantly outnumbered by the Ruffians, whom amounted to three Armies.  What helped to level the playing field was Corps Commander Biletsky, whom has been fighting for over four years and who was responsible for the Corps adopting Western NATO doctrine over the old Sinister one.

     For a bit of background history, Jack explained that the old 3rd Assault Brigade was turned into an Army corps by the addition of 4 other brigades: 125th, 50th, 60th and 63rd back in 2025, and that these units had their performance turned around inside 6 months.  Yes, well, he would say that; every soldier that ever lived is convinced his regiment is the best ever, ever.  Still, the proof is in the pudding; that salient north of Lyman that took the Ruffians 48 months to grind out is now gone.  Art!

Jack!

     Jack also explained about how the Ruffian front lines are being starved of everything thanks to the incessant Kozaky drone strikes up to fifty kilometres from the front lines.  Thus, instead of Ukraine having to mount frontal attacks, the Ruffians will have to fall back closer to their supply lines or risk total logistical collapse.  A good point.  Or, perhaps, a good Fire Point.

     Which is where we came in.  Thank you Prez and Jack.

Concorde At Duxford

As promised, or threatened - only you can tell! - here are the pictures Your Humble Scribe took of the Concorde interior, a miniature museum in it's own right.  Art!

     Interior seating and boxes of mystery instruments.  The testing of Concorde went on for years, something like 1,800 hours flying time, to ensure it was as safe as possible.  That's Sal and Tom ahead of me.  Art!

     The laughingly-titled 'escape hatch'.  If anything went wrong and the test-flight crew needed to bale out, they had to get into this one-man chamber, after blowing the outer hatch off by detonating explosive bolts, whilst wearing a parachute.  I think I'd rather take my chances in the aircraft.  Art!

"Abandon aircraft beacon"

     The upper photo shows the instrumentation that the test-flight crew would be monitoring, since there were more people aboard than merely those present in the cockpit.  All the test-flight crew wore flight suits and oxygen masks, given that they were operating at an altitude of 60,000 PROUD IMPERIAL FEET, or, if you like, 11 miles.  So high it would take you 5 minutes to hit the ground, and slightly longer if you had a parachute.  Wowsers.  The AAB, you'll be glad to hear, never needed to be used.  Art!

     A somewhat blurry shot of the corridor leading up to the cockpit.

Paint And Brush Rather Than Pen

- nington.  Yes, we're back on 'Sci-Fi Art's slideshow of Bruce Pennington's evocative artworks and are now at 5:49 of a total of 7:09 minutes.  Art!

     Conrad is unsure what this is - a werecat? - but is pretttty certain it doesn't have my best wishes at heart.  Surely it must be uncomfortable, perched on a headstone like that?  A bench would be much easier to sit on.  Aha!  I did a bit of digging and whilst 'Monster sitting headstone' and 'Monster in a graveyard' were busts, 'Monster graveyard' got a hit.  Art!

      Still no explication of what the werecat is doing there.  Art!

     I suspect this one is an exercise in creating a spherical perspective.  Note that the trademark coral architecture and flying objects receding to the horizon are both present.  I tried searching but got no hits at all, hence my suggestion above.

Another You What? Moment

That MSN newsfeed I refer to has thrown up another bizarre screen item that Your Humble Scribe is having trouble understanding.  Art!

     I've heard of 'NVIDIA' even though I'm not sure quite what it is.  Something to do with mobile phones?  Or am I confusing it with 'Nokia'.  Never heard of any other of whatever they're describing.  A little digging is in order.  Aha.

"NVIDIA Nemotron is a family of open-weights, high-efficiency artificial intelligence and multimodal models built by NVIDIA to power agentic AI applications and complex reasoning workflows"

     Hmmmm.  Only slightly less confused.  AI?

     DO YOU WANT SKYNET?  BECAUSE THIS IS HOW YOU GET SKYNET!

Finally -

You see, I can avoid mentioning Cankles Von Y for a whole blog.

SIIVET!

Which Is, Of Course - Obviously! - The Finnish For 'Wings'

Because we're back on a slideshow from IWM Duxford, the home to hundreds of planes and other large vehicles.  If I had to tramp around the enormous site for seven hours and take photographs then you are most certainly get the benefit of my actions.  Art!

     This is the rear port side of the Victor, seen in the background in an earlier blog.  Can't have you seeing the whole thing, you'd get too excited.  Your Humble Scribe is unsure if this is the bomber or tanker variant; I suspect the bomber as I think the tankers just had a single monochrome paint scheme.  What you see in the foreground is a Thunderbird, with transparent panels so you can see all the goodies inside.  This is a stripped-down version.  Art!

     It's a big beast when fully assembled, intended to destroy Sinister bombers up to 30 PROUD IMPERIAL MILES slant range.  It also featured briefly in an episode of 'Doctor Who', where The Master described it as being nuclear-powered with a nerve-gas warhead.  Rather egging the pudding, one feels.  Art!

     A study in opposites.  What you see in the foreground is a Northrop MQM reconnaissance drone, made in the Fifties to supply eyes in the sky for the South Canadian army.  It was their first unmanned drone, seventy years ago, and would not recognise it's own grandchildren of today.

     The big white missile in the background is the 'Blue Steel', a British nuclear stand-off missile, built to be carried and launched by the 'V' bomber fleet.  It toted the 'Red Snow' fusion warhead of 1.1 megatons yield, meaning more like Red Vapour than snowflakes.  Art!

     You can tell these things are ordnance, BUT there were no explanatory plaques, so all I can tell you is that the one nearest the camera is a bomb, 200 PROUD IMPERIAL POUNDS at a guess.  No idea why the others aren't streamlined or have tail units.  Art!

     A torpedo!  Shiny and black.  Behind and above it is one of the only surviving TSR2s. a name that makes plane geeks weep in anguish.  It was an extremely advanced supersonic strike and reconnaissance jet, but it was also a money-pit of black hole proportions and was scrapped before entering service.  Conrad also believes that Lord Mountbatten The Mountebank had something to do with the cancellation, because it threatened the Royal Navy's carrier budget.  Art!

     More nameless ordnance.  The missile nearest the camera has the look of an anti-ship item (it's not a Harpoon as I checked), and Conrad has a sneaking suspicion that the hefty green guy in the background is a nuclear bomb.  I seem to remember seeing a similar item at IWM Salford.  Art!

     Three young chaps in suits.  Very suspicious.  Art!

     More nameless ordnance.  That yellow one strikes me as being First Unpleasantness dateline.  Aha!  A modicum of digging reveals that it's the British 1,650 pound bomb.  Art!

Puny human for scale

     This whopper was constructed to be carried by the enormous Handley Page bomber, which craft is sadly absent from Duxford.  I think the bomb with the orange nose might be an aerial mine, which was dropped by parachute and hung nose-down.  But don't quote me on that.  Art!

     I can't find any photos of aerial mines in colour, nor did Googling provide any more clues, so my hunch must remain just that.  Art!

     An helichopter!  This is the Westland Wessex, one of the ugliest aircraft to ever wobble into the skies.  That's as much as I know about it and go Google if you want more.  Art!

     Here is the only surviving Concorde in the world, and it looks fast standing still.  I have cheated here and used teh Interwebz for a photo as I may have taken one myself but not in sequence and I don't fancy trawling through 200 photographs to track it down. As you may have guessed from the stairs, you can take a stroll through the interior, which is a museum in it's own right.  I'm not going to inflict that on you today, it will drop tomorrow or maybe later.  I bet you can hardly wait.

 

Let's Be Literary

Allow me to buff up my reputation as a shallow pseud <the horrid truth courtesy Mister Hand> whom has a keen WHAT? That traitorous appendage!  No, I mean another entry from that list of books dealing with the classical world.  Art!

18. Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1903)

by Jane Harrison

     That human-animal hybrid on the cover looks rather like the winged bulls of Assyria, about as far from ancient Greece as one can get.

     The blurb explains that Jane's magnum opus, well over a century old, is very readable and witty, but that's not enough to tempt me <wallet sighs in relief> and also it's over 700 pages long.  Conrad is still ploughing through Volume 5 of 'The Expanse'.


Whilst On The Subject Of Books -

Nothing as high-brow as Jane's work, just a nod to the list of sci-fi novels that are similar to 'Greybeard' in being post-apocalyptic.  Art!

IGNORE THE FILM!  IGNORE THE FILM! which is only slightly based on the book.  Hell Tanner, the protagonist, for starters, is a Hell's Angel, not a clean-cut Air Force officer.  The mission is to cross Damnation Alley and get plague serum to Boston.  I forget why they can't use aircraft; Roger wanted his characters to sweat a bit.  The mission also starts out with three 'cars', since the author believed in redundancy.  Hawkwind also do a pretty rocking version of it on 'Quark Strangeness And Charm', condensed as it's not a triple concept album.

     I think that the DNA of Rog's story is also clearly visible in the '2000 AD' Judge Dredd serial 'The Cursed Earth', where atmosphere conditions don't permit cross-continental flight, so Old Stony Face has to transport plague vaccine overland.  Art!

The Clock Is Ticking, Donold

I am typing this on October 1st, meaning there are now 34 days until the South Canadian mid-term elections and, as predicted, Cankles Von Yamteats is not bothering to go 'on the stump' and campaign in contested districts.  Mostly because he is as welcome as plutonium soap in a jacuzzi and candidates want to boost local issues, not 'They Stole My Election' for the 1,423rd time.

     People with special circumstances are already sending in postal ballots, which process King Piggy was unable to stop.  Cynics - or realists - are now pondering if he's going to fake an emergency and use that to 'postpone' the elections, which will then never happen.  I doubt it.  Even Don Snoreleone understands the South Canadians won't take that sitting down as they aren't supine sheep.  Unlike another electorate I can think of.  Art!

Awww.  Doesn't he look sad?

FLIGHT OF THE PAGBEAST!

      That bottom one is proof Fat Caligula's hair is a sentient symbiotic organism and has taken on it's winter plumage.

Back To Brucie

Mister Pennington, the man who wields a paintbrush not a pen.  We have skipped over some of his paintings, especially the earlier "Dune" variant covers.  We are now some 5 minutes 37 seconds into a 7 minute slideshow.  Art!

     Verrrry symbolic, Bruce.  I believe the sinister horned chap is modelled very closely on Brucie himself.  Nice to see the coral architecture back.  Not sure if that's a comet, meteor or asteroid about to cause grief in the background.  the city to starboard looks as if it's already been hit.  Art!

     I like this one - very evocative.  It has a look of the Oriental to it, nicht wahr?  I wonder if it was a book cover - not quite a Title Gap at the top but close to it.  Allow me to dig a little.  Nope, not coming up with anything.

AND WITH THAT WE ARE DONE!