"It's Like A Sports Car!" - Part One

This Intro Will Allow Me To Get Rid Of A Bookmark

 - that has been sitting in Youtube's 'Watch Later' for months.  It's from the 'Australian Armour And Artillery Museum' and concerns two of their rebuilds being taken for a drive around their trials course.  The driver is named 'Kurt', which seems rather apt for the last vehicle he drove.  Art!

     That above is the 'Stug III', short for 'Sturmgeschutz III', an assault gun cobbled together from the chassis of an obsolete Panzer III and a 75 mm anti-ank gun, designed with absolutely no regards for ergonomics.  Art!

Kurt is contorting himself into knots here to change gears.  Art!
     Then you have this, a Cromwell, capable in it's early variants of hitting 45 PROUD IMPERIAL MILES per hour, and which Kurt declares to be akin to a sports car, which is where we get our title for today from.  Compared to the lowly Stug's plodding 25 mph.
     The dragway here is typical of a drag strip, being dead straight, flat and paved, used for side-by-side racing over 1/8th or 1/4th of a mile.  Car-l informed that this particular event was a 'no-prep', meaning the surface lacked any kind of additives to aid sports cars with traction.  He and Winning Wifey took along a trio of cars, which he describes as an '1996 Honda Civic Hatchback sporting an engine swap', and if Art will put down his bowl of coal -
     Their other car was a Japanese import not available commercially in South Canada: a Nissan Laurel.  Art!
     There was a 3rd car that plays no part, so it's not getting a description.
     Hmmm.  So much for AI.  I don't see any drivers.
      This striking image is from a burning Wildberries warehouse complex - is there any other kind now? - in Samara.  Conrad,  only lightly anchored in reality, recognised the signature title credits of 'Doctor Who', Sixties iteration.  Art!
     Bruce tends to focus on subject matter that isn't all hardware and spaceships, but he manages a credible rendering of 'Discovery One' as inspired by the film "2001", in a rather Vincent Di Fate style, whom is another story from a different kitchen.  Art!
or yuIt is

     ANYWAY of course - obviously! - that has verrrry little to do with the rest of the Intro, which is dedicated to a Youtube tale of revenge that I found fascinating as it refers to sports cars, an area I know 0.0% of, but am willing to take direction in.  I will dub the narrator 'Car-l' because I like to make you wince, and his other half will be Winning Wifey.  His tale comes in two parts, the first of which takes place at a drag strip WASH OUT YOUR FILTHY MINDS we're talking about a specialist race track.  Art!

     By 20:00 hours our protagonists had accumulated the not-inconsiderable sum of $20,000 thanks to winning 'small wagers' across the day as they competed with other drag racers.  They were looking to pack up their kit and roll, when Klutzy Kar Ken made an entrance, hereafter abbreviated to KKK.  He was brash, pushy, loud, a dyed-in-the-bones misogynist and tried proposing a $10,000 wager on a race between his car (a 1969 Pontiac GTO) Art!

It's like a sports car.
Because it is one.

     and Car-l.  After hearing KKK repeatedly insulting his wife, Car-l suggest they race her in the Laurel against KKK, whole huge yet fragile male ego cannot resist the lure of both verbally and mechanically beating Winning Wifey.

     Our Man Of Motor also puts it to KKK that they race for possession of each other's car, by depositing their pink title slips with a race official.  Whom doesn't seem to bat an eyelid at such a wager, implying that it's not exactly commonplace yet not novel either.  Car-l later goes into a bit of corroborative detail about how such betting is perfectly legal, just as much as placing a bet on a horse.  Thanks, Car-l, we'll take that as a given.  Art!

     ANYWAY ANYWAY the race is over a quarter-mile.  KKK pulls ahead immediately off the start line, and is then beaten by Winning Wifey, whom lives up to her name.  This is not a photo-finish, there is exactly 0% debate about who won and who lost.

     You can probably guess how this goes.  Car-l and WW go to the track official holding the title deeds and pick up both, and then go to visit KKK.

     Who flies into a fiery rage, denying that SHE won, SHE got lucky, SHE needs to do best out of three, SHE's not getting the car - on and on for 15 minutes.  Car-l notices that KKK has, unwisely ('wise' seems a concept he has very little grasp of) left the keys in the car, which he deftly snaffles.  Art!

Hard to find a good sucker punch illo

     Car-l is then sucker-punched by KKK, whom still refuses  to admit defeat, threatening to call the police - 

     Until the Track Owner - a lot more wholesome a title than 'Drag Strip Owner' - turns up, tells KKK to leave before the police are called to trespass him, and that he's banned from the track.

     Car-l and Winning Wifey leave, with the GTO in tow.

     Here we shall end Part One, which has been focussed around the cars and racetrack.  Part Two has stupidity ladled upon a heaping serving of stupidity, with a stupidity side and liquid stupidity to wash it down with.  Did I mention stupidity?

They can play the soundtrack

You've Gotten Off Lightly So Far

By which I mean all the highly kinetic events taking place in Ukraine and Mordorvia.  The Ruffians are continuing with their Murder Missile Mission, which they have been waging since 22/02/2022.  The orcs have a very shallow learning curve.

      Meanwhile the Ukrainians are continuing to find new and interesting things to hit with their drone waves every night. 'Waves' is the appropriate noun, they occur in the hundreds, up to 400 of the Furious Birds nightly.  Art!

Work with me on this

The Prof Is Emptying My Wallet Again

Or trying to, and it's still 2 weeks until payday.  His last recommendation was a couple of murder mystery novels from a Croatian author, which are only just out in paperback and thus unlikely to be around as second-hand copies on Abebooks any time soon.  Art!

As recommended by Professor P. Caddick-Adams, the piker

     0P VERITABLE was the British army's crossing of the Rhine and invasion of Germany proper in early 1945.  No, it was not all over bar the shouting, there was a lot of blood spilled in what was not a mere cakewalk.

     Hmmmm. I wonder how much it costs? 

     £45! Plus I was wrong, it's only available in hardback. Maybe 2027.

Bring On The Brucey

Pennington, that is, as featured on the 'Sci-Fi Art' Youtube channel.  Which we've looked at previously, when it was dealing with Angus McKie.  Conrad has seen other vlogs they have, focussing on other artists, some of whom I recognise with more I do not.  Art!

I

     You ought to have recognised the 'Title Gap' at the top of his illo here, so the publisher can add in whatever the title will be.  Since the gap here isn't that large, they can't use a whole lot of words.  I note that they didn't re-use this illustration for a completely different novel, such as 'Lord Of The Rings' mind you Ol' Clarkey did set his original Discovery mission towards Saturn, which does have rings - or am I overthinking this?

 A Final Ungentle Shoeing

Only for this blog today, don't worry, I haven't acquired a sudden sense of good taste, mercy or toleration.  Art!

Mister Entirely Misplaced Smugness is seen here in one of his more perilous situations, including all the assassination attempts: being in the vicinity of Marine One, the giant helicopter responsible for transferring his gargantuan bulk around.  The rotor downdraft is so powerful it's revealed his baldness hidden by the Hair Helmet, which may be why he's resorted to a large piece of wool, woven into his scalp.  

     There's a pulp comic strip that Smuggy reminds me of, just can't place the artist yet.  One of the 'Mister Monster' spin-offs, I think.  I shall dig and get back to you.

The Siege Of Liege

Ha!  Fooled You, There Have Been Numerous Sieges

 - of this Belgian town over the centuries, the most recent being the one carried out by the Teutons in 1914, during the opening days of the First Unpleasantness, which is the one I want to briefly touch upon, as - you may be ahead of me here - this preamble is not the main Intro.  Art!

    It's surprisingly difficult to find photographs of the 12 forts before the siege began, so that above will have to serve.  They were huge concrete structures erected in the late 19th century as a 'Just In Case' if the Teutons or French got over-frisky.  They lasted all of 11 days in August 1914, the last one falling on August 16 as the Teutons annihilated them with special super-heavy artillery designed for just such a job.  Art!

The 'After' pictures

     Including some Austro-Hungarian special Skoda 'morsers' borrowed specifically for the operation.  

     The ring of forts, as mentioned, lasted only 11 days when under Teuton  bombardment, with one weakness being a lack of sand layers to absorb shell detonations.  A siege of that short a duration means the garrison didn't have to suffer the ignominies of running short of food, water, ammunition and port in the mess.

     HOWEVER! a word you were surely expecting, over on the Eastern Front matters took a different term at the Austro-Hungarian fortress town of Przemysl.  Art!

     As with Liege, the town was surrounded by a ring of forts, and note the legend giving scale in PROUD IMPERIAL MILES.  

     Just to recap a bit, late in 1914 the Russians had successfully occupied Lwow/Lvvo/Lviv/Lemberg <delete where necessary> and then advanced on Przemysl, pushing the Austro-Hungarians back to the Carpathian Mountains.  Thus began the first siege, as of 28th September 1914.

     What was different about this one as compared to that of Liege?  Well, it went on for a lot longer, the defenders were better prepared, and the besiegers were - ah - how can I put it? Russians.  To exemplify, after the town and forts were surrounded - 'invested' in siege parlance - the Ruffian general in charge ordered a frontal assault that went on for days, achieved nothing and resulted in 40,000 casualties.  Ooops.  Art!

     It has to be a painting as the Russians don't seem to have taken copious photographs of their repulse.  How very odd.

     ANYWAY AGAIN one reason this headlong bashing failed is because the Hapsburg commander <takes deep breath> General Hermann Kusmanek von Burgneustadten had taken 20th century precautions, having rapidly established networks of protective trenches and barbed-wiring them to the value of 600 miles.  To have that much barbed wire in stock presupposes intelligent foresight, which is unusual at this stage of the conflict.  Art!

     Given the ebb and flow of warfare at this point, the Hapsburg armies came back in October and raised the siege, Hoorah! a loud reply.  Then they got pushed back again and the siege began again as of November, and in earnest this time, no suicidal frontal assaults.  The Russian strategy was to starve the garrison out and bombard them ceaselessly whilst doing so.  

 There were a couple of aerial innovations during the siege, notably the Ruffians being innovators in the field of tactical bombing in December 1914.  Art!

    How splendid to know that your siege is making history!  To counter the siege the garrison also used aircraft to send out mail, as well as sending mail in balloons when the wind was right, and pigeon post before the garrison got too hungry.

Art!

     Not so much 'Europe after the rain' but 'Przemysl after the siege', as it got a right shoeing for months, between the shelling and bombing.  Numerous Hapsburg attempts to reach the garrison failed until Conrad* von Hotzendorff, the Hapsburg's biggest wig of bigwigs, informed von Burgneustadten in late February that there wouldn't be any more attempts to raise the siege.  Ooops.

     The garrison surrendered on 9th March 1915 after 113 days, yielding up 117,000 troops and 700 guns, in what was the high-water mark of the Ruffian war effort, especially as the unsuccessful Hapsburg attempts to raise the siege had been far more costly than the siege itself - up to 800,000 Austro-Hungarian troops were un-alived or taken prisoner, much to the discomfiture of Conrad** von Hotzendorff.  Art!

"Fixer-upper for sale.  One previous owner."

     Perhaps the greatest blow of all was to Hapsburg morale, which saw their prized fortress overrun by the Rus.  Nor were the Teutons impressed with the martial valour and capacity of their ally.

More Ungentle Shoeing

This one is courtesy David Pakman on Youtube, from 10th August 2026.  You see?  You see how painstakingly I maintain my records? and also why I will never be allowed to enter South Canada under the present administration.  Art!

     The lights are on, barely, yet there's  nobody home.  By this point Fat Caligula is now having trouble getting in and out of his golf carts, and the purple wimwams have spread up his arm.  He's rotting apart from the inside out, which is probably why he ascends and descends stairs so gingerly; a sudden fall would cause him to split in half.

Back To Bedlam

Since it has come up in my news feed, I am going to address the share value of the Trump Media & Technology Group. which has gone unreported here for many months.  Art!

     TMTG posted a loss of $238 million in Q2 of 2026, which is not very good, in case you were wondering.  You may, sweet summer child that you are, wonder if this total is an improvement on Q2 2025.  Look at the graph to determine that the answer is 'No'.  In fact the losses in Q2 of 2025 were only (!) $24 million.  Ooops.

     Art!

     'Twould appear that the reason Trump's media holdings made such an enormous loss was because they were indulging in both Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, more scambles that, as an investment strategy, resemble the image above.  Art!

An echo chamber

     One thing about 'Truth Social', the sole company asset, is that the users of this social media platform are all fanatical Trump cultees, whom agree fervently with everything he says and does.  Thus is created the 'echo chamber' phenomenon, where people don't bother to stay as there's no challenge or difference in posts.  Art!

Thank you  AI Art Generator.

     So, the visitors at TS have plummeted over the past year, from 436,000 in July last year in total, to 261,000 in July this year.  Typically, Twitter receives 3.3 billion hits per month on average, or over twelve thousand times Donnie Dorko's traffic.  

    You may be holding out hope for the company's profits to transform this doomy financial picture.  'Fraid not.  They only came to $1.17 million to date.  Sorry!

Back To Bruce

Pennington, that is, the current focus of our looking at his portfolio on 'Sci-Fi Art' over on Youtube.  Art!

     This does remind Conrad of another cover, one of the 'Lucky Starr' juveniles from Asimov, let me just check -  Art!

     Perhaps thematically similar, if not alike.  Hmmmm.  Next!

     O it's that band again! the one with 'Blood' in the title that I can't recall totally and cannot be bothered to look up, either.  Tut tut publishing house!  Art!

      O dear me, AGAIN!  Don't these people realise that Bruce needs to pay the mortgage, buy in his groceries, fuel the car and get more paints?  The utter cads and bounders!

     THIS IS INSUPPORTABLE!  DOG BUNS BRUCE I AM GOING TO BE USING THE REMOTE NUCLEAR DETONATOR THANKS TO THIS!

     <short pause for blood pressure to subside>

     I've checked ahead for the next image and it's a different one, huzzah!

Another What On Earth Moment

According to all the pundits and everyone on social media, This Sceptred Isle is undergoing a drought thanks to extreme heat conditions, and I can indeed confirm that I'm guzzling half a gallon of water, not to mention tea and carbonated swill.  So - WHY?  Art!

Finally -

Bracing for the eclipse later tonight - this being typed on Wednesday afternoon despite what day you're reading it.

*  Excellent name!

**  Still an estimable name!

To Make It Make Sense

Allow Me To Shamelessly Exploit One Of The Best Debut Albums Ever

As if anything like conscience, morals or respect for a musician ever had any effect here at the blog.  Art!

     Well worth a listen.  You, children of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, might have a little trouble parsing that title, so just imagine that instead of 'Wireless' it says 'Radio', because that's what it was.

     All clear?  Good.  Let us proceed.  As radio emerged as the media method in the Twenties here in This Sceptred Isle, broadcasts began to span the nation.  By 1922 the 'British Broadcasting Corporation' had been created, with the splendid motto 'Nation shall speak unto nation'.  Not that all spoken was worthwhile, since the first commercial broadcast was of an opera singer.

     ANYWAY Art!

     BBC headquarters.  No expense spared for a national institution!

     Here an aside.  It's a given that all the right-wingers in Perfidious Albion detest the 'Lefty' BBC, whilst all the left-wingers in Perfidious Albion detest the 'Pro-Establishment' BBC, so if it's offending everyone equally it must be doing it's job properly.

     ANYWAY AGAIN back to the radio broadcasts.  By September 1923 these had reached such a profligacy that they required a magazine to inform the listening public.  Art!

      By 1936 the Beeb had ventured (first across the globe) into the dizzyingly new medium of TELEVISION! which has made a lot of people very angry because they can't use their imagination and the cost of a licence <Cont. Page 96> Art!

     Inevitably, the 'Radio Times' began to - you may be ahead of me here - list television programs in it's weekly publication.  There was a separate section for films being shown that week, which was outstanding in the double-length Christmas edition.  Conrad could look at all the films his parent's refused to watch.

     ANYWAY ANYWAY what has provoked all this sepia-toned nostalgia?  O I thought you'd never ask!  An image from Facebook is what.  Art!

     The date of publication is important, since the six-week holiday from school for that year had begun as of July, and would continue to run until early September.  So Conrad was at home in the holidays for this page of the 'Radio Times'.  Let's have a closer look at the individual programs.  

'The Flashing Blade': This was a dubbed French program, split into umpteen 25 minute sections, to play across the summer holidays, and I would definitely have been watching this episode as of this date.  Art!

     Terrific theme song, which was in English.  Conrad cannot remember seeing the last episode, so please - no spoilers in the Comments.

"Noggin and the Ice Dragon":  Ah yes, Noggin the Nog, the semi-animated tales of a mythical Norseland and it's inhabitants, one of the outputs from the Postgate studios.  If Art will put down his bowl of coal - 

Supper's ready

     For an 'Ice' Dragon it more resembles sentient spinach.  Art!

     This is shorthand for 'Kid's programs are over for a couple of hours, let the adults watch the batting with a glass of beer'.  I've no idea what happened to the other 4 tests, Conrad is a howling black hole of ignorance when it comes to cricket.  Then, early afternoon -

"The Herbs": Okay, kid's programs are back.  This one was another animated one, that Conrad rather liked.  The central character was a lion dubbed 'Parsley', since all the characters were named after - once again, you may be ahead of me here - herbs.  Thus Dill the Dog, Sage the Owl, Lady Rosemary, the Chives, Bayleaf the gardener - Art!

"The News": Now, back in the early Seventies all the newsreaders were men.  None of that silly gender equality back then.  Note that the weatherMAN also gets a credit, since this is Perfidious Albion and we take our climate seriously.  Art!

     That is the late, great Kenneth Kendall appropriately in black and white, as the new-fangled colour television was still a novelty.  Art!

     Back to the grown ups, in Welsh this time, with an Eisteddford to endure.  Then more cricket.  The British love love love their cricket, but to Conrad it makes as much sense as Welsh.  

"Play School": This was a flagship of the BBC's children's broadcasting, that was around for decades.  It featured a shifting cast of presenters, a set of dolls and a series of windows that the program took an exploratory trip through each day.  Art!

     Conrad always treated it with mocking disregard, as he was far too old and mature to bother with a 'baby's program'.  So I'm not going to spend any more time on it. Tee hee!  Art?

     Okay, a cheap and cheerful South Canadian imported space-filler.  Conrad had a soft spot for the verrrry short-sighted Vincent Van Gopher.  Art!

     You and me against the world, Vinnie, you and me against the world.

"Jackanory": One of the BBC's most famous and cheapest programs that ran for decades.  It was simply a presenter - occasionally a celebrity - reading from a book directly to camera, with a few illustrations thrown in during the reading.  Art!

     Art!

     'Harlem Globetrotters' is an animated series, not the real thing, another filler program from South Canada.  I may have seen an episode where they were all playing blindfold, being helped to score by pies being dangled in front of them on fishing rods - Art!

     'Barrier Reef' is another filler program, the difference being that this one is, unusually, Australian.  Conrad remembers seeing a couple of episodes and they were deeply boring.  Art!

      Zzzzzzzzzz -

     It was boring guff about a research ship saili zzzzzzzzzzzz

     Yes yes yes, it may have been terribly worthy and ecology-aware but it was altogether lacking in explosions.  Give me 'Thunderbirds' any time!

     I have put the 'News' in there as at this point the adults took over the television set, the dastards.  We may come back to the more 'adult' portion of the schedule at a later date.  I bet you can hardly wait.

Conrad Yawns

As you should surely know by now, Conrad is not the least interested in the ballfoot game, apart from the BBC's hilariously venomous 'Have Your Say' when fans throw creative insults at each other's teams.

     ANYWAY AGAIN there is some bimbling guffwater who bribed BOOH with a fake peace trophy and whom is back in the news - Art!

     Hey mate, get in touch with a Hollywood casting agency, the next live-action 'Thunderbirds' film that needs someone to play 'The Hood' just landed you a contract.

     O the ballfoot stuff?  Who cares.

On The Loose With Bruce

Pennington, that is, sci-fi artist as featured on the Youtube channel - once more, you may be ahead of me here - 'Sci-Fi Art'.

     Conrad has arbitrarily decided to skip the artwork sequels to 'Dune' such as 'God Emperor of Dune', 'Dune Messiah' and 'Frank Herbert's Recently Discovered Laundry List'.  Art!

     Conrad recognises this one, it was used as a cover illustration - 'Space-Time And Nathaniel' if memory serves.  Brian Aldiss?  Art!

Close enough

     Nathaniel has let himself go a bit, hmmm?  As have those skyscrapers in the background.  Brucey also likes to repeat flying objects ranging back to the horizon, doesn't he?  Hmmm and where did a mountain of skulls originate from, I wonder?

     Having a look at book review sites doesn't help, this is a collection of 14 short stories from early in Bri's career, so there may be a story where an hideous alien sits on a pile of bodies, scanning the skies, but we'll never know unless I buy it and that's not going to happen.  Art!

     Looks like an album cover.  Allow me to dig a little - 

     I rest my case Your Honour.

Conrad: Trailblazing Or Is It The Silly Season?

For Lo! these many years we have been carrying out 'A Little Musical Critique' whereby we rigorously and analyse, in exaggerated fashion, song lyrics.  Of late we have focussed on 'The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway', which is difficult to make sense of even when quite sober.  Art!

Shall I click?

     Or is this an example of editors without enough content to fill their webpages, and whom resort to the basest of all journalism?

     Don't worry, we'll be returning to TLLDOB, don't doubt it!

Finally -

No photographic evidence but I made a huge bowl of zharkoye last night - Ukrainian beef and potato stew.