THE DANGERS OF A BREWER'S DICTIONARY!

I Only Half Apologise For The Block Capitals

Making a point.  Note that we only used a single exclamation mark, because we're British here and don't believe in Continental levels of drama.

     Here's a bit of foreshadowing.  Art!

     So! this Intro is coming to you from an entirely unexpected news source that I came across whilst looking up something else entirely.  This is what I like to call the 'Brewer's' syndrome, that being the 'Brewer's Dictionary Of Phrase And Fable' wherein you look up one item <selects at random> 'MIDDLE TEMPLE' which is defined as one of the INNS OF COURT, and which item also goes on to mention INNER TEMPLE - meaning another two items you need to check out, and then there's also the risk of another item on those pages catching your eye.  Art!

Inner Inner Temple

     The howling irony here is that I came across this Item's (eventual) focus when looking up background on teh interwebz for 'The Lamp Of Phoebus'.

     First of all, we're once again going to need to define terms.  Harking back to our first picture, if I were to say 'Cartel' then you'd immediately jump to thoughts of the Mexican drug cartels whom are determined to supply wicked illegal drugs to South Canada.  Not noted for their gentlemanly manner and definitely not the kind of people to introduce to Mom and Pops.  Art!

     HOWEVER we are dealing with an entity that predates these bounders by a good 100 years, so let's look at the dictionary definition of 'Cartel': "A collusive international association of independent enterprises, formed to monopolise production and distribution of a product or service, control prices, etcetera.  From the German 'Kartell' via French and Italian 'Cartello', a written challenge."

     Great, glad we got that out of the way.  Next, we have to deal with another deeply immoral and unethical aspect of capitalism, especially South Canada: Planned Obsolescence.  This is where manufacturers deliberately plan, plot and variously conspire to render their artefacts liable to fall apart or fail or become useless.  In today's technology-driven society this means having to update to Windows 11 from Windows 10 but in the past it was more about physical artefacts.  Art!

     That's Phoebus driving the horses of the sun across the sky, as the Greeks and Romans fondly believed astronomy to be.  Art!

     Welcome to the 'Phoebus Cartel', a conglomeration of international lightbulb producers of the world, back when the incandescent bulb was the only game in  town.  Art!

     These reprehensible scammers constituted a who's-who of industrial companies: General Electric (South Canada), Osram (Germany), Tungsram (Hungary), AEI (Great* Britain), Compagne des Lampes (France), Tokyo Electric (Japan) and Philips (Holland).  Born into wretched existence in 1925 and only brought to an end by the Second Unpleasantness in 1939: they had planned this cartel to last for 30 years, the utter cads.  

     What did they do that was so terrible?  Well, before the cartel the standard life for an incandescent bulb was 2,500 hours; they conspired to bring this down to 1,000 hours, a 40% reduction.  If we look at the year 1930 as an example, the cartel sold 420 million light bulbs.  At about 30 cents per bulb that works out at $84 million, and these are the prices of almost a century ago.  Art!

A metaphor

     The cartel had teeth.  If a producer manufactured light bulbs that exceeded the 1,000 hours limit, they got fined, the amount depending on how efficient/unprofitable/long-lived <delete where necessary> they were.  One of the Swiss members came out with a quote that encapsulates the whole cartel's attitude and motivation: "After the very strenuous efforts we made to emerge from a period of long life lamps, it is of the greatest importance that we do not sink back into the same mire by paying no attention to voltages and supplying lamps that will have a very prolonged life."

     Gotta keep those profit margins high!  Except, you know, that World War Two thing that put members on opposite sides and killed the cartel.

     However - a word you surely knew was going to crop up - that 1,000 hour standard that they decided upon a century ago is still the industry criteria, so you can they had the last laugh.  Art!

     Up to a point.  Conrad is happy to point out that GE, as above, got into very hot water in 1949, when the South Canadian Supreme Court took them to court over their anti-trust activities.  They lost, and subsequently got hit with civil measures that broke up their monopoly, viz: 1)  They had to break up their connections with other cartel members; 2)  Certain patents were gifted to the public for free, gratis and nothing;  3)  Their competitors were to be given access to the GE patents at reasonable prices.  Art!

Points and laughs

      

     What you might call Phoebusted.

Sea Levelled

No apologies for yarking on about the hot topic of the moment, which is the Ukrainians making the Sea Of Azov a very, very no-go area for Ruffian shipping.  The SOA is the small inland sea north of the Black Sea, with the only access being via the Kerch Straits.  Normally it's a bustling hub of marine activity as the orcs send freighters full of grain south into the Black Sea, and small riverine tankers that offload fuels to onto much larger Aframax or Supermax tankers for global forwarding.  Art!

     Impressively large, nicht wahr?  Except it's not going to get loaded if the riverine tankers aren't sailing out to meet it.  

     Now for a telling marine map from 'Jake Broe'.  Art!

    As is hugely obvious, the SOA is empty, empty, EMPTY!  The merchant marine (and Ruffian navy) are hiding in and off Novorossiysk in the south - Art!

     This is risky for the small riverine tankers as they are not designed for work on the open sea, and a storm will split them in half and sink them.  Art!

     Other marine traffic is being held up at Rostov-on-Don, where there is now a bottleneck, as they're not being permitted to transit the SOA.

     Oooops!

Sorry, Couldn't Resist

Art!

     IT'S ALIVE!

     Art?

     You can see the family resemblance.

Dead Can't Dance

No!  Not the band Dead Can Dance, Art!

     I had one of their EPs back in the mid-Eighties, which w

     ANYWAY one of the more interesting news items from South Canada is the overnight demise of Senator Linseed Greyman (Lindsay Graham if we're being formal), who was responsible for licking Donold's shoes to a high shine.  He was definitely pro-Ukraine, but only as far as Donold was willing to go, which is to say not at all.  Donold has consistently stalled anything positive for Ukraine, so the conspiranoid swivel-eyed loonwaffles postulating that Linseed was poisoned because the bill was about to get enacted are verrrrry wide of the mark.  Art!

     Much more apposite is whether Linseed shook hands with Judge Death Vance recently, because that's a much more likely conspiracy.  

     ANYWAY AGAIN Linseed's out-of-turn dropping dead has rather taken the spotlight from, by acting as a metaphorical lightning-conductor, from Mitch McConnell.  Mitch, whose favourite film is 'Frozen'**, was last seen in public on June 11th.  There was an undisclosed 'medical event' at his home on 14th June, and he hasn't been seen alive since.  Various members of the Wizard Lizard Gizzard Party are assenting, without evidence, that they've had long phone convos with Mitch or even joined him in jitterbugging across the ward floor.  Art!

BOOJUM! remaining tasteful

     Conrad remains unconvinced, especially as one of the 'proof of life' photographs is from 2023.  Why they're keeping Mitch's status a secret is rather a mystery; he had long given up the position of Majority Leader in the Senate, acknowledging his failing health, so it's nothing to do with remaining in office.  Possibly a verrrry embarrassing and sordid end circumstance involving goats   <REDACTEDREDACTED>?

Finally -

Going out with a Biercism.

"Admirability,n: My kind of ability, as distinguished from your kind of ability."

*  HA! Eat it, Lavrov!

**  I know, I know, low-hanging fruit and all.

To The Wars

As A Theme, Rather Than The WW1 Games Review

Which we are only halfway through, you lucky people, so we're going to get back to that at some point in the near future.  Your Humble Scribe has to say, a lot of these games are down as 'Out Of Stock' even on their parent company's website, meaning they were a bit niche in the first place and didn't generate enough sales or interest to <ahem> stay in the game.  Art!

Not sure about this one.  France and the Low Countries 1944?

     ANYWAY, as ever, we need to define our term.  'Collins Concise English Dictionary' to the fore!  Art?

Amazingly bucolic and pacific

     "War.  Abbreviation. 'Warwickshire'"

     ENOUGH OF THIS NONSENSE!  

"War: open armed conflict between two or more parties, nations or states.  From the Old Northern French 'Werre', related to Old High German 'Werra'."

     Well, it makes a change to the numbers nine, three or four.  I am now bringing on my 'Brewer's Dictionary Of Phrase And Fable' for the rest of this Intro or until I get bored.  

'The Terrapin War': Not a name I was familiar with, this concerns the war Great Britain fought against the Treacherous Backstabbing Colonials, in the 1812 - 1814 timeframe.  As if we didn't have enough to do beating Napoleon!

     ANYWAY ANYWAY the 'terrapin' epithet comes from being completely enclosed by the Royal Navy blockade, as in a turtle in it's shell.  A rather long-winded analogy if you ask me, and even if you don't.  Art!

A Terrapin (it says here)

'The Potato War': Another one I've never heard of, and no wonder, it defines 'obscure'.  Technically, it was the 'War of the Bavarian Succession' that ran for a whole year between 1778 and 1779.  'Potato' because, rather than seeking bloody and decisive conflict on the field of battle, each side sought to deprive the other of food.  Makes for a very dull hex-and-counter game, Vulnavia.  Art!

A little more dignified than 'The Terror Of Tubers'

"War Bride: a soldier's bride, met as a result of wartime postings or operations" Not very dramatic.  Art!

     

     I've actually seen this, or at least the last half that was broadcast on television.  Conrad seems to recall that it was a decent satire, inverting the normal trope of a foreign woman marrying a GI and the hilarious consequences thereof.  Also a chance for Cary to do a bit of drag.  Art!

You're not fooling anyone, matey

"War paint: The paint applied to their faces by Native Americans and other peoples to make their terrifying before going out on the warpath.  Also, of a woman, to putting on elaborate makeup in order to overcome her rivals.  Figuratively, a phrase applied to getting ready energetically to enter a dispute."  Art!

     The Google description insists this is a 'fierce woman warrior with war paint' but, I feel, it looks more as if she's not bothered to wash after a heavy day's work in the coal mines.  Art!

     That's more like it.  You'd think twice before jumping the queue in front of him, nicht wahr?

"War Of The Elements: A storm or natural catastrophe".  That's a bit basic, let's have some of the natural catastrophes that South Canada is so profligate with.  Art!

     Hmmm how grateful I am to live in a country with boring weather.

"The War Of The Roses:  the usual name given to the civil wars in England between 1455 and 1485 and the Lancastrians versus the Yorkists.  The Yorkists, under Henry Tudor, were successful, which has led to bad blood between Lancashire and Yorkshire ever since."  Art!

ART!

     To continue: "The name is not really historical and appears to derive from Sir Walter Scott - " '- the civil discords so dreadfully prosecuted in the Wars of the White and Red Roses - 'Anne of Geierstein (1829)."

     O that wacky Walter!  He invented the name 'Cedric' in 'Ivanhoe' which he ought to have been 'Cerdic'.  Inventive if not accurate.  

"Wargame: Originally known as 'Kreigspeil', it was introduced in 1824 by one Lieutenant Von Reiswitz, who completed and improved his father's design.  It depends on the use of maps as battlefields in miniature and blocks or counters representing troops and the like, for the purpose of instructing officers in military tactics."  Art!

Very very old school

     'Brewers's' has the temerity to claim that computers have taken over the wargame.  As if! - check out my blogs over the past week.  Perhaps at the Pentagon, not at The Mansion.

"The Austro-Serbian Pig War": Yet another obscure war that I distinctly remember from 'A' Level History.  Once again not a real shooting war, rather a trade tit-for-tat between Austria-Hungary and Serbia.  The Serbs, you see, had very ungratefully gotten their artillery from the French, which put the Hapsburgs nose out of joint, because they assumed the Serbs were still in their sphere of influence, so - agricultural bans it is.  Art!

     Which I think is self-referential enough to end this internecine Intro.  We've only just tickled the surface of this subject, and I bet you can hardly wait once more.

This Has Been Going The Rounds

Some say it's genuine, others that it's AI, neither of which bothers Conrad as it's so hilarious to watch.  To set the scene - Art!

     The machine gun in question is a triple-barrelled rotary one, as used on Ruffian helicopters, which delivers a high rate of fire and a lot of torque.  Who knows which idiot orc thought 'I know!  Let's put this on a pintle mount in the back of a truck!  What can possibly go wrong!'  

     They had to ask.  Art!

     The gun stays on target for all of quarter of a second before the torque swings the barrel clockwise.  Normally these things are mounted on a helicopter in a turret that removes any such slewing around.  Art!

     The instructor barely has time to register what's going on as Gunner Greenhorn is swept around thanks to being inside the harness.  Art!

     Instructor hits the deck, narrowly avoiding being decapitated.  Good drills there, mate.  Art!

     Gunner Greenhorn is physically hurled overboard, which at least means his finger is off the trigger and the gun is no longer firing.  Kinetic energy will keep the gun spinning for many revolutions yet, and the amount of rounds fired will also render the barrel verrrry hot.  Art!

     The gun keeps swivelling until friction slows it down.  Only about 3 seconds have elapsed by this point.  Art!

     The instructor stands up, slightly amazed at having head still attached to body, and is now infamous across the globe as a meme.

It's Hard To Keep Up

I'm writing this on Monday, prefatory to publishing it on Wednesday, and already today's blog is out of date as regards the Ukrainians ongoing onslaught against Ruffian shipping, ports and other infrastructure in the Sea of Azov.  The total of ships hit is now 105.  Art!

     I believe the Ruffian's Azov fleet amounted to 120 ships, so 83% are now out of commission.  This echoes the Allies Operation Flax and Operation Retribution, choking off the Axis bridgehead in Tunisia by sinking or shooting down all supplies being sent from Italy and occupied ports in the south of Europe.  It did not end well for the Axis, and - you may be ahead of me here - it's not looking good for Putinpot and the swarms of Mordorvia.

A Moment's Silence Please

No, not for that lickspittle toady Linseed Grayman, whose sole talent was polishing Donnie Dorko's shoes to a high shine with his tongue.  Art!

     He was in a great many more films than JP, matey, and if I was your sub-editor I'd be whaling on your bottom with a barbed-wire baton.  Recall him as the sly spy in 'Memoirs Of An Invisible Man' or the personification of evil in 'Event Horizon'?  Or one of the few unmutated humans left on Planet Earth at the end of 'In The Mouth Of Madness'?  Art!

"Sam's character was very cross"

     He was also a far more sympathetic character in both 'Dead Calm' and 'The Hunt For Red October', nyah nyah John Hammond.  And, in one of his better genre roles, the literal blood-sucking capitalist in 'Daybreakers'.  He must have enjoyed doing that one, where Australia pretended to be South Canada.  Art!

Sam being saturnine

Finally -

RAF Duxford is go!

We're Going To Start With Lamps

First Of All, A Recourse To My 'Brewer's'

Every home should have one.  A 'Brewer's', I mean, although lamps are jolly handy when the night arrives and you want to do a Codeword without wrecking your vision.  So - did you know that 'The Lamp of Heaven' is poetic-speak for the Moon?  Rather unreliable as a source of illumination, one feels.   In which case one has recourse to 'The Lamp of Phoebus', which is the sun.  An altogether more dependable light in the sky.  Art!

Apollo but close enough

     

     We now jump forward in time, yet still in the past, and the dim and distant days of August 1914, where sinister events on the Continent, as well as a baroque system of secret treaties and alliances, had brought matters to the brink of war.  Unusually, Great Britain was about to become involved in the sordid squabbles of the European mainland, backing the French militarily.  Art!

Gaslighting when it was not an offensive behaviour

     Sir Edward Grey, the British Foreign Secretary, was mournfully watching the gas lamps along the street being lit before nightfall, being aware that his nation was about to enter a Great War and not being very cheerful about it.  Art!

Ted looking morose

     He came out with an expression that his friend and audience, a journalist called Spender, took down: "The lamps are going all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime."

     Wow.  Probably a buzzkill at parties, too.  In fact the lamps came back up again by 1919, to a greatly changed Europe where the royal houses had vanished.

     It's interesting to note that Herr Schickelgruber came to power in Germany in January 1933, whilst Ted didn't jitterbug off this mortal coil until November 1933, so he must have had a sense of deja vu.

     ANYWAY back to that list of "ALL TIME BEST WW1 WARGAMES" by 'The Dice Treasures', which is what we've been leading up to.

14) 'The Lamps Are Going Out' By Compass Games

Art!

     TDT define this one as 'High strategic level' and you can see the map-board includes all of Europe, the Med and the Near East.  There are mountain ranges, indicators for industry, ports and one has to juggle economics quite as much as strategies.  Art!

     'Event Cards' permit unpleasant and pleasant surprises to be inflicted or endured by players, meaning that merely sitting back and repeating history will not work.  For those who crave the warlord experience.

13)  "The Great War" by PSC Games

Art!

     Hmmmmm.  Miniatures on a board, again.  No, Conrad, do not stand in judgement!

     TDT mention that the gameplay is card-driven whilst combat is via multiple dice and that, unlike a lot of these games, it concentrates on trench warfare.  Heart in the fight place, then.

12)  "1914 Offensive a Outrance" By GMT Games

Art!

     The title is French for 'Giving the bally Hun a right drubbing' and this looks like one of the hex-and-counter games I was looking for.  Art!

     So, again, the concentration is on manoeuvre warfare before the arrival of trenches by the end of 1914.  It comes on two great big maps and over 7 countersheets of units and markers, 2,100 of them, so pretty much the poster child for a 'monster' game.  Covering the events from early August to late November, it's described as 'Complex' which I have no doubt it is, whoopee, but of limited solitaire playability <sad face>.

11)  "The Battles For Ypres" By Compass Games

Art!

     Using that famous photograph of the 10th Cameronians going into action on the box cover, I see.  Ypres, the last Belgian town held by the Allies, held out against two Teuton offensives in 1914 and 1915, and was the base for the terrible third battle, dubbed 'Passchendaele', in 1917, which pushed the Teutons off the shallow ridges that ringed the ruined urban hellscape.  Once again a hex-and-counter game, and it's unusual for a publisher to pick on individual battles like this.   Sounds right up my street so doubtless long out of print.  Art!

     Hmmmm.  Conrad ponders and rubs his chin.

10)  "Fields Of Despair" By GMT Games

Art!

    The war in France from 1914 to 1918, waged at the strategic level, where you have to make economic and technological decisions in addition to military ones.  TDT goes into coils explaining about how the counters used are in a block format, meaning you can stand them upright and conceal exactly what your opponent might be hiding - an entire Army or a mere Diversion?  Art!

     If done properly this simulates the 'fog of war', because no army since the dawn of time has had full and complete information or intelligence about their opponent.  The French at Crecy might have manoeuvred differently if they'd known how devastating the English longbow was in ranged combat, as an example.

     I feel they're putting a bit of a downer on the probability of gamers purchasing this product; you don't expect to see 'The Joy Of Conflict!' on a box cover but having 'Despair' in the title doesn't help shift product.  How about 'The Joy Of Hex'?

From The Sublime To The Ridiculous

Donnie Dorko has once again managed to get up and down the stairs of Air Force One without falling, by the simple method of gripping the handrail for dear life and carefully plodding one step at a time, stopping for a breather halfway down.  

     This next picture has nothing to do with that, it's just one of him being a gormless oaf on stage, confirming his IQ is the same as his shoe size.  Art!

     One MAGAt on Twitter claimed that this was taken out of context, as if that made any difference.  In or out of context, he still looks like a bafune.

IT IS NOT A TANK!

You know Conrad, a man who lives to be made happy by being made unhappy, especially by spelling or grammar mistakes.  Factual ones count, too.  Art!

     It's NOT a tank.  Yes, it has tracks, and even a small turret mounting a machine gun, but it's purpose is to carry infantry into battle and support them when they get there.  To this end it has very thin armour.  Behold the MTLB, which the Ruffians have been using in Ukraine in lieu of more expensive, modern armoured fighting vehicles.  It's been the basis for umpteen 'Frankentanks' cobbled together as cheap alternatives to kit that actually does the job.

Is It A Slow News Day?

I did wonder.  Art!

     Ho ho ho, sub-editor, verrrrry droll.  Your items are indeed laced with humour.  Funny to the last.  Instep with your editor's policy <that's enough punnery - Mister Hand redacts any more silly nonsense>.  O I see, you're putting your foot down?

I Shall Put This Up With No Comment

Art!

     Okay, a bit of comment.  What you see here is RAF Duxford, the official museum of the RAF, hopefully to include the odd plane from the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service, the two pre-RAF organisations that were merged on April 1st 1918 to create the Brylkreem Boys.  A date the other services have never let them forget.  

     Conrad has never been here, nor is he anywhere near as clued-up on planes as he is on tanks.  More info to come later in the year.

O I Say!

For decades it was rare for those artists who did the work on sci-fi book covers to be identified, either by signature on the front or a credit on the back.  As I remember a reviewer complaining, this was pretttty unfair, as a striking cover illo naturally caused browsers to become buyers.  S.  Art!

     I already have a Youtube item about Angus saved in my 'Watch Later' queue.  This one has a story about it.  That spaceship to starboard?  It's the 'Hooded Swan', a unique variety of FTL craft, piloted by the misanthropic Grainger, whom never gets a first name.  Authored by Brian Stableford and dating <shudders quietly> back to the early Seventies.  

Finally -

Going out with a Biercism.

"Motive,n: A mental wolf in moral wool"