Czech It Out

I Can't Promise That's The Only Bad Pun Of The Day
You know me, unable to keep any kind of deal if I think there's the possibility of greater traffic involved.  Shallow!  Predictable! Poor fashion sense!  That's Conrad.
     "Is there a point to this?" I hear you asking.  "And will it be reached before we fall asleep?"
     YES on both counts, you under-appreciative whipper-snappers.
     After a short pause to let the veins on my temple settle down, I would like to bring you up to speed on the recent military history of the Czech Republic.   SIT BACK DOWN!  This is interesting, really.
     Okay, Czechoslovakia, as it was at the time, emerged from the ruins of the Hapsburg Empire.  Before the Second Unpleasantness it had a thriving arms industry, and the Bren light machine gun used by the British (and Commonwealth) army was a joint development between the Czech arsenal at Brno - hence the "Br" and the British one at Enfield - hence the "En".  

A Bren gun

The Czechs also had a pretty handy tank armoured fighting vehicle, the T38, and a clunkier model, the T35.  When Czechoslovakia got handed over to the Nazis, why!  they were ever so grateful to get their hands on all those precision-engineered Czech armoured fighting vehicles.  About a quarter of the AFVs that Germany invaded France with were from the Czech stocks.  Gee thanks Mister Chamberlain.

Czech T38

     Come 1945 the Czechs swap one extreme occupier for another and up until 1993 they are occupied by the Soviet Union.  Given the Velvet Revolution and the subsequent crushing Russian invasion in 1967, one does have doubts about how hard the Czechs would have fought for their eastern cousins.
     Now the Czechs are part of NATO, and as a result have been supporting combat operations abroad.  Conrad came across a Youtube video about Czech special forces in Afghanistan - go on, you'd no idea they'd been there, had you? - and he'll stick with the acronym CzSF as the correct title is long and difficult to spell or pronounce*.

This is from the official broadcast

     It's all jolly exciting stuff, especially the above showing a dirty great truck mounting a monster cannon coming out of the river like Godzilla from the Pacific depths.  There was also an evocative still, as below:

Note the city lights - in a czecherboard pattern ...

     There you go, folk from Brno.

A Day Late And £0.70** Short
I should have posted this photograph yesterday, except I didn't come across it until long after the blog had been posted and I wasn't going to create another for a single article.
     What am I talking about?  Yesterday was the 21st of February.  Here's the photo:

At mid-rignt

     What are the odds of reading a dated item on the same day?  364 to 1, I believe, if what you're reading contains dates at all.
     That's yesterday's coincidence.  So far none for today, although we still have six and a half - DON'T SNEAK UP ON ME LIKE THAT!

You What?
There is a saying that the bucolic folk of Oldham have: "Chin were floored", meaning that they are so flabbergasted that their maxilla is dangling low enough to sweep sawdust off the street***.

???

     Conrad feels similarly about the above clickbait article.  Deadly sharks - CAMOUFLAGED AS DOGS!  "14 GIFs that prove everything looks better with explosions" - WITHOUT ANY EXPLOSIONS! but with sharks CAMOUFLAGED AS DOGS! Or perhaps that bikini-clad beauty on the float is actually the shark - in which case why are there dogs there?  Or do they blow up? - because that'll get them in trouble with Anna^.
     You might not be able to make out the lower text, so here it is:  "Embrace your explosive side with Sacha Baron Cohen's new action comedy Grimsby".
     Does it have sharks in it?  That explode?  Because otherwise Conrad cannot understand how a Suggested Post so triply stupid can exist.
     Oh - unless it's a typo - "This deadly bark attack"?  Except those dogs look like Labradors, about the soppiest dog in existence.
     
I Am Beginning To Get Annoyed
How lucky for you that Conrad lives in a country where the only way to get firearms is to set yourself alight^^.  He has come across another "Suggested Post" by the Foobs that really beggars belief.  Art?

"Interested in trading?"

     Once again the Foobs prove that they have the IQ of  bag of potatoes.  NO I am not interested in trading.  I have NEVER been interested in trading.  I do not go on trading websites, nor do I click links that lead to such sites.  NO I am not interested in trading (I realise this is simply cutting and pasting the second sentence, but I wanted to make a point).
     Bah!


* Unless you're Czech, in which case it's easy.
** A dollar, if you must know
*** That's quite an image, isn't it?  All my own work.
^ Hi Anna!
^^ A bit grim, perhaps, yet it amuses me.