Having A Three Sum

Firstly, WASH OUT YOUR DIRTY MINDS!

 - you disgusting sleazy slutchbags.  'Sum' in the mathematical sense.  Really, when have we here at the blog ever been NSFW?  Yes yes yes, we did feature a woman's bottom in 2015, but is was a statue and that makes it art, small 'a'.

     So!  Today we are back on the subject of 'Three' because there's load of entries in my 'Brewer's Dictionary Of Phrase And Fable', in addition to my own febrile, fecund imagination*.  Art!

You find mud on cow pasture, right?

     This, lest ye be unaware, is a 'Monster made of mud', thank you AI Art Generator, because the first entry in our Three montage creates a desperately boring image.  Art!

THREE ACRES AND A COW: Apparently this is a phrase used by the English politician Jesse Collings, as shorthand for the radical agricultural polcies he was pushing in the late nineteenth century.  Art!

Worthy yet dullllll

THREE-DECKER: Conrad, greedy baggage that he is, will lead with this being the name for a sandwich made with 3 slices of bread.  Art!

     ANYWAY the term is more properly applied to warships in the age of sail, as to one possessing three decks of guns.  Art!

     This is 'HMS Neptune', a first-rate ship of the line, mounting scads of cannon, which would be run out to fire out of those hatches.  Suprisingly, my 'Brewer's' neglects a much, much older three-decker: the trireme, a warship of antiquity that was propelled by three banks of oars, which is where the name comes from.  Art!

     Wind power via sails was used as an adjunct, as oar power wasn't transient or variable.  What looks like a 'beak' is the principal weapon of the trireme: a metal ram, which - you may be ahead of me here - was rammed into an enemy with all the speed the crew could muster.  Art!

Rather more pacifically -

     This is another 'three-decker': at top, the pulpit, lower down the reading desk and at bottom the clerk's desk.

     Okay, we now dart off at a tangent thanks to Conrad's skip of a brain and will consider bands who have the number 3 in their name.  There are more than I realised.  Art!

THE THREE DEGREES: We'll get these out of the way first as they have zero street cred, although I believe Kingie quite liked them when he was Princie.  A black female trio from Philadelphia out of the Sixties (I think and cannot be bothered to check any further) who were famous for <Googles> 'When Will I See You Again' which in my case, ladies, will be exactly never.  Is that good for you!  Splendid!  Art?

THE CRUCIAL THREE: This is cheating, really, because it's so obscure and I only know it since I'm a completist, otherwise known as an annoying pedant.  They were only around for a couple of months 49 (!) years ago but are significant as all three went on to considerable success with other bands.  They were Ian McCulloch (later of Echo and the Bunnymen, Pete Wylie (later of Wah!) and Julian Cope (later of The Teardrop Explodes).  I will let you try and guess who is who.  Art!

FUN BOY THREE:  That above is known as a 'cash-grab' by the record label, because the band only put out two albums in total and if you were a proper muso you'd already have both.

     ANYWAY TFBT were not much 'fun', only by comparison with the group that they'd departed, The Specials (originally The Specials a.k.a. said the annoying pedant).  They were only around for a few years in the early Eighties and had the good grace to break up instead of bimbling along for the money.  Art!

Can't they count?  There's a lot more than 3 there

THREE DOG NIGHT:  I have heard the name but doubt I've ever heard any of their songs.  The somewhat bizarre name alludes to the Australian aboriginal practice of fending off the cold by sleeping next to a dingo - allegedly.  If if was a really cold night then they used two dingoes and for realllllly cold nights, three dingoes.  Dingoes being an Ocker species of wild dog.  Art!

THREE DAYS GRACE:  Conrad knows nothing about them but already likes them with an album title and cover like that.  After going a little Google-fu, they are a Canuckistanian rock band who have been around since 1997, which means they've had 6,753 days of grace already and can probably teach a certain diminutive gargoyle about the discrepancy between 3 days and <political screed redacted courtesy Mister Hand>.

     

     Okay, I think I've leavened the more boring aspects of Three with my own unique and unwanted insight, so let us move on to meatier matters.

Enlightenment Dawns!

I mentioned having a mind like a skip above, which is both a blessing and a curse, as things come up to the surface at random, making me go off at a tangent, or at a tangent to a tangent.  Art!

Skip contents

     This is how it goes: I mentioned dingoes.  I then remembered a comic annual I had that featured a strip called 'Bluey Benson's Dingoes', whom were Ocker soldiers waging guerilla warface on Crete, after they'd been left behind during the evacuation.  Could I find any reference to it online?  NO I could not!

     I did, however, discover the title of a comic strip that I'd read one issue of in a comic I couldn't remember the name of.  Art!

     "The Crimson Ball" was about - you may be ahead of me here - a giant crimson ball, which was almost indestructible and was piloted by 'The Master', who was determined to use it and destroy all British airfields across This Sceptred Isle.  Art!

Looks like a Vulcan about to get scragged

     Another long-standing mystery solved.  Go me!

     Now, where were we?

In Order To Create Words Of Wit, Wisdom And Wonder -

The blog, you bafunes, the blog!  In order to have a little music to entertain my ears as I type, I use various music vlogs on Youtube, including 'Spy Electronica - Surveillance Grid'.  The artwork for these 'Bassline Noir' sound montages is pretty good as well.  Art!

     I have no idea what he's doing but it looks great.

From The Sublime To The Slime

No!  We are not talking about that most noble of characters, Slimer from 'Ghostbusters'.  Instead we have a far less salubrious character, it being the Orange Landwhale himself, and another ghastly photo garnished from my news feed this time.  Art!

     He looks both wretched and haggard there.  No date given but I think this is a relatively old one, as he's out and about and shambling across a lawn, rather than sitting down behind a desk as of late.

Krim Krisis Kontinues

Forgive the cod spelling, it's just that I like using the proper name for Crimea.  So, the fuel crisis is getting worse, as the Kozaky drones keep hitting Ruffian tankers, whose drivers are now demanding a month's wages to do a single return run to the peninsula.  Art!

          This is the first part of a video clip and none of those cars are moving.  Today (actually Thursday) no fuel AT ALL was delivered, and the Governor of Krim had a few sombre lines to speak, beginning with a stark warning that there was no fuel for sale, only government people with vouchers were eligible for fuel, and police were going to be posted to petrol stations to prevent rioting and anarchy.  Art!

Translation: "Serfs must walk"

     Meanwhile, Mordorvia moulders on - there are now fuel restrictions in 14 regions, not because of attacks by Ukrainian drones on logistical choke points, but because of Ukrainian drone attacks on refineries and storage depots.

     Putinpot is apparently having to purchase very expensive Belarusian petrol to keep supplies up, and it's not working.  Tee Hee!

Finally -

Day Four of being entirely sober has gone well.  Got lots done, including Hawkeye.  Much more complete.

* I ain't going to define either.  To your dictionaries get yourselves!

Miniature Flying Mallets

One Of Conrad's Less Than Precise Phrases

Concerning the Lancasters and Stirlings of the Brylcreem Boys during the Second Unpleasantness, is to refer to them as 'Giant Flying Mallets', in terms of what damage they inflicted upon the Teutons.  These were very large, four-engined bombers carrying a payload of 6 tons at a minimum.  Art!

      There's one of 617 Squadron's Lancs breaching the Mohne dam.  You have to understand how robust a fe

     ANYWAY let us now dart off at a tangent.  This blog is going to be published Friday but Conrad is typing it up on Wednesday 3rd June, which is significant because it's when Mordorvia holds the 'St Petersbug International Economic Forum', where the orcs lie ceaselessly about how wonderful the economy of Mordor is going and would you like to invest, please?  Art!

     Normally you can guarantee that Bunker Midget Grandad will attend to make a keynote speech, since he gets to show off to an array of international guests, including, quite unremarkably, a South Canadian representative.  You can bet the Trump administration would not only not have boycotted the 1981 Olympics in Moscow over the invasion of Afghanistan, they'd have gladly attended and paid for the whole lot.

     ANYWAY Art!

     Here is Putinpot at the 2025 SPIEF, making a speech someone else wrote for him, as he has not the slightest clue about economics, and thinks you can reduce inflation and interest rates by shouting at them.  You may recall my comments on Twitter about a recent meeting he had with various economic and financial talking heads, complaining about how the macro-economic indicators were not increasing, and yet neither he nor anyone there dared mention the war, which was the herd of elephants in the room.

      I think it's now time to introduce the Miniature Flying Mallets.  Art!

'Dron Bombarduvalnyk' in Ukrainian

     You may be able to tell from the watermark that this map is the work of 'Dronebomber', who posted it on Twitter last night.  Unusually, there are relatively few drones going for Krim, and a heck of a lot heading in the direction of Barad Duh.

     DB always cautions that the numbers - 310 last night - and directions are only approximations, probably with a deliberate degree of ambiguity built in to avoid helping the orcs. 

     Pop quiz, how far is it from the Ukrainian border to St. Petersbug?  

     Quick answer, 850 kilometres to 1,100 kilometres depending on the launch point.  Conrad is unsure about how long the flight time for a Firepoint or Hornet drone is to St. Petersbug but anticipates that a good few of those on DB's map above will be heading there.  

     Why so?  Art!

     This is the skyline of St. Petersbug this morning.  Those drones headed apparently for Barad Duh were, instead, aiming for the second city, where they've hit the oil refinery just outside the suburbs, the Kronstadt naval base and a military plant in Tambov.  Art!

     That's a closer view of the oil terminal being hit, with lots of what the Kozaky call 'Bavovna', and a couple of startled orcs pondering what's going on and why things are exploding.  Art!

     This is one of the rabid rascals responsible for wreaking havoc this morning.  One thing you cannot tell from these illos is that there are no air raid sirens going off in the background, principally because that might alarm those attending the SPIEF.  Never mind the residents, they cant take their own chances.

     Conrad is unsure how much an FP1 drone weighs, and cannot find any details online about it either, meaning that the Kozaky may be keeping that info under wraps.  They can vary the size of warhead used, with a 50 kilo one for maximum range.  Art!

 

     Here's what must be hideously embarrassing for Putinpot: the delegates for SPIEF assembling for the forum under the backdrop of fires and smoke extending to the horizon.  The excuse of a 'technical mishap' tends to crumble under the presence of at least four different columns of 'Bavovna'.

     In fact it's going to be questionable as to whether Charlie Chipmunk Cheeks turns up at all, or merely appears on a monitor, or sends one of his doubles to attend, since there is the possibility of his delicate epidermis being under threat.  Art!

     A light-hearted orc looking horribly amused at the carnage he's supposed to be stopping, gazing out to the fires raging at the oil terminal.  He's a member of a rather laughably titled 'Mobile fire group' tasked with shooting down drones.  Art!

 - except they're not exactly mobile, are they?  Nor are you likely to bring down an FP1 with small arms.  Although there was a lot of small arms fire down at the naval base, they didn't down any drones.
     Predictably, the Kozaky and friends have been gloating non-stop on Twitter all this morning.  We shall see what cope the Ruffians come back with.  

Frank Hampson Did It Better

Shame on you if don't realise that Frank and his studio were the ones responsible for creating and illustrating 'Dane Dare'.  They had a certain design of spaceship that was straight out of the Forties and organisation borrowed from the RAF of the Second Unpleasantness.  Art!

     These rocketships plainly launch from an upright position, to which they are raised from horizontal, as seen in the example lying prone at starboard.     Why am I referencing all this?  O I thought you'd never ask!  Art?

     You can see the DNA from Frank in the lines of SpaceX, which is good, as SpaceX is a real spaceship and Frank's only came from his imagination.  

     Despite Conrad re-reading "The Expanse" do not be confused about the 'Torch' because it's not a fusion one.  

Revisiting 'Charley's War'

Charley's company has been forced back from their front-line trenches and are having to improvise a hasty line, digging connecting trenches between craters and putting up barbed wire in front of them.  Art!

 

     That's the wiring party carrying and unspooling barbed wire from the drum of it they hold between them on a bit of pipe.  They're a bit close to the impromptu trench line.  Art!

     Here's a chap malleting a screw piquet into the ground once the wire has been attached.  They were designed to have any long, thin, flat object put through the circular top so they could be silently screwed into the ground, but in this instance speed is of considerably more importance than stealth.

     In reality it was the Teutons who had to resort to joined-up shell craters by the end of the Somme campaign, when underground concrete bunkers with beds and electricity were but a distant memory.

Today Is Day Seven Of The Orange Landwhale's Absence

People on Twitter (ha! take that Elong Tusk!) have been pointing out that Donnie Dorko hasn't appeared in public for seven days now, ever since he came back from Walter Reed Hospital.  The White House hasn't bothered to comment, but when this happened last year people were speculating that he was dead.

     'How can you tell?' is my horrid response.

     He proved to be alive, and there was never any explanation of his absence, which is strange for a man who lives to be the centre of attention.  Informed opinion had it that he'd suffered a stroke.  One wonders what excuses will be dreamed up this time?  Art!

     Wow, looks like the lights are on but nobody's home in the case of Pumpkinhead.

More Of Molasses

Technically, of treacle, as I recalled the title of one of the 'Uncle' novels, which was 'Uncle and the Treacle Trouble'.  Alas, I cannot recall more than the title, as I must have last read it about 55 years ago.  I wonder if we prod Art hard enough he'll come up with the goods?

     That's Uncle in his purple dressing gown, and the Old Monkey, and Beaver Hateman hurling copious amounts of sticky goo at our hero.

     The plot?  I'm so glad you asked!

"The story involves the Badfort crowd's attempt to sabotage a mural commissioned by the King of the Badgers, which leads to Uncle being trapped in a cinema with a hidden iron cage, from which he is rescued by his allies."

     Makes perfect sense to me.

Finally -

I keep forgetting we have frozen spiced edamame beans in the freezer.  Perhaps if I write it down my calcified brain cells will remember.

Considering That I Am Re-reading 'The Expanse' -

If I Were To Say 'P.D.C.'

You might think I was referring to one of the in-story acronyms that James A. Corey had dreamed up for a particular weapons system - the 'Point Defence Cannon', which is a swivel-mounted ultra-rapid fire 20 mm cannon, slaved to radar that allows it to track incoming missiles and engage at relatively short range - the point defence of it's title.  Art!

     These things are essential to deal with any missiles that get past your interceptor missiles.

     ANYWAY no, today's Intro has nothing to do with light torpedo bombers or enmity 'twixt Earth, Mars and Belters, and rather more to do with what I shall call 'molasses', since we're dealing with South Canada not This Sceptred Isle.

     This is another story I picked up from 'Be Amazed', and I've had to correct a few errors that crept into the 'When Engineers Get It Incredibly Wrong' montage, because Conrad likes to do a bit of digging.  Art!

     That, gentle reader, is a molasses tanker, for indeed there were such things.  Molasses, for your information, are one of the by-products of sugarcane refining, and were used by South Canadians up to the end of the First Unpleasantness in preference to the much more expensive refined white sugar.  Art!

     Their other major use was being fermented to create ethanol, which was produced on an industrial scale, especially during the First Unpleasantness, where they were used to produce explosives.   Not so sweet, hmmm?

     Enter the 'Purity Distilling Company', who constructed a distilling plant in Boston, which was supplied by molasses piped from a huge storage tank at the harbourside, constructed in 1915.  Ships like the one above would dock and unload their molasses cargo directly into the storage tank.  Art!

The distillery, courtesy BA

The Commercial Street tank, again courtesy BA

     The bit about 'engineers' getting it wrong is another misnomer, because the design and installation of the tank was carried out by the company's Treasurer, Arthur Gell, who had exactly 0% experience of engineering or construction.  However - a word you surely knew was coming - he was a lot cheaper than hiring professionals who knew what they were doing, and he could be guaranteed to adhere to Management Principle Number One: Do it as cheaply as possible.  He ignored evidence of strain to the structure, which was known to groan and creak when being loaded with molasses.  Nor did he bother to fill the tank with water once completed to check for leaks.  Art!

     Meet Mister Ronald Mayville, senior engineer of contemporary engineering company Simpson, Gomperts and Heger.  He did a critical study of the Commercial Street tank and found it to have been shoddily constructed, using only half the steel in the walls that ought to have been an absolute minimum.  Many of the rivets used were defective, meaning that the tank leaked from day one.  So much so that local children would gather round and make themselves sick by gorging on leaking molasses, whilst their parents would scrape it off to use as a sweetener.

     Did P.D.C. try to remedy or mitigate this cowboy build?  NO THEY DID NOT!  Instead they painted the exterior of the tank with molasses-coloured paint, to disguise the leaks.  Remember, Management Principle Number One.

     You may guess where this is leading, that being nowhere nice, and you're entirely correct.

     On the 15th of January 1919 the tank collapsed with an enormous roar, rivets being thrown around like bullets, and a tidal wave of molasses flooded the Boston  harbourfront.  Art!

     Here is one of the most widely reproduced photos of the aftermath as cleaning up took place.  Art!

     The sad remnants of the Commercial Street tank.  When it collapsed, it released 2 million gallons, or over thirteen thousand tons, of molasses, which had heated up within the tanks.  The tidal wave was 25 feet high and travelled at 35 miles per hour.  You may be smiling at the thought of a deluge of treacle; please don't, it killed 21 people and injured another 150.  Once it had travelled and lost heat, it became increasingly viscous and impossible to escape from once trapped in it.
     PDC immediately tried to wriggle out of being held responsible, claiming that anarchists had blown up the tank because - er - because - they were so anarchical and molasses was part of the military-industrial complex.

     It took 6 years of investigation until they were found guilty and responsible, having to fork out $628,000 in damages ($11 million in today's money).  Art!

     What caused it?  Well, thanks to Ronald Mayville we know that a fatigue crack in the metal next to a manhole cover promulgated suddenly and rapidly.  The last load of molasses from Puerto Rico was delivered at 4º C, considerably warmer than the ambient sub-zero temperature of Boston in winter, and it may well have caused a fermentation surge, causing the stress fracture mentioned above.

     There was also the looming prospect of Prohibition on the horizon, which may well have impelled PDC to cut even more corners than usual, in order to get their product out before it got banned.
     You now have a rather ghoulish counter to anyone using the phrase 'Slow as molasses'.

     

'Not Dead, Merely Sleeping'

This is a phrase you occasionally see on gravestones as an epitaph, taken from Luke 8:52, leading to all kinds of theological explanations, which we will instantly avoid.  Instead, we move from the sublime to the grotesque.  Art!

     Note Rubio 'Sixty pieces of silver*' casting a discreet eye to his port, clearly aware that Donnie 'Nodfather' Dorko is no longer conscious. Smeggy Heggy, sitting alongside his bloated orange master, is looking determined to straight ahead.

     Conrad, being ghoulish, rather wonders how they can tell when Don Snoreleone is actually dead, because his eyes are closed so often, and none of them dare shake him awake.  Also, he constantly emits a foul odour, the souce of which we shall avoid even thinking about, so the question must be, how will they tell?  Possibly when the flies arrive.

What Was I Thinking?

As you should surely know by now, Your Humble Scribe keeps a Word document open with interesting photographs and text extracts deposited there for later use.  Problem is, thanks to old age and gin, I fail to annotate pictures about why I have them bookmarked.  Thus - Art!

     The Who, at the height of their powers and when Moon and Entwistle were still alive, so before 1978.  If there was a legend with the photo I didn't copy it over.  Interesting in it's own right.  Hang on -

      Ah!  I did a bit of digging.  Art!

     We are all better-informed than we were five minutes ago, and you're welcome.

Here's Another One I Can Only Apologise For

Once again, this illo is a victim of Conrad getting a snip of the picture and not including the blurb below it on my news feed.  Art!

     If I recall despite gin and old age, the blurb was something along the lines of 'They didn't use it for long'.  Well, if it was Factbytes getting it wrong again that wouldn't surprise me.  This is the Roman 'Semovente L40 da 47' assault gun, and it was in use from 1942 to 1945.  Technically and tactically it was to accompany the Bersaglieri in infantry assaults, providing mobile fire support with it's 47 mm gun.  It was based on the hull of the L6 light tank, which was frankly outclassed by everything else on the battlefield.  Art!

     So they built 400 of the L40.47, making a quite decent assault gun from a pretty weedy AFV.

     There, I think I've covered my bases well enough for one item.

Progress Report

Getting along with the Marvel metre-long jigsaw.  Got nearly all of The Hulk in there.  Art!

      All those bits on the outside are bits that might belong to Hawkeye.  We'll see.

Finally -

Forgot to mention that I'm going dry, potentially until September, with only my birthday the possible exception.  Gallons of tea ahoy!

*  He held out for twice what Judas got.  What a negotiator!