The Past - Another Country?

That's Just Me Being Rhetorical
There needn't be a question mark there, the past really is another country, and one that Conrad appears to have been deported from.
     "Why the despondency, old fruit?" I hear you asking.  "Better humour him, he's been at that bottle of Bailey's left over from Christmas*," I hear you adding as well NOT VERY QUIETLY!
     Well, your humble scribe made the discovery earlier today that he's been at his Still Anonymous Employer for nearly four years now rather than the three he fondly imagined.  And talking of imagining, imagine a time before BOOJUM! because that's when I started there, in the creaky Victorian slum building on  - **.  True, I had more time on my hands, yet there were people out there with a thirst for non-sequiteurs, bad puns and preachy posts about armoured fighting vehicles.
     Then there's this:

     Pretty obviously a photograph of my pens in a mug, plus a pair of scissors.
     The question is, Why?  This is no accidental snap taken by mistake.  I have carefully taken this picture in order to - er - yes.
     You see what I mean about being deported?  Not only that, given a kick up the behind and a stern warning not to darken the doors of posterity again.

Brute Strength And "Cooties"
OR
Why Your Insides Stay In
Conrad is currently watching the amusing yet scary "Cooties", which has some icky moments as well, although your humble scribe does have a criticism at about the 24 minute mark, where the film reaffirms the myth of human frailty.  Seen to effect in "Shaun of the Dead", in "Cooties" we have undead cannibal psycho schoolkids ("How do you tell the difference?" - A Teacher) digging into an adult's stomach as if it were i) Easy or ii) Made of giblets wrapped in tissue paper.

"Cooties" - South Canadian slang for Head Lice

     This is patently inaccurate***!  The human body is designed to be quite robust and NOT come apart at the seams.  Especially when those doing the pulling are children.  If you doubt Conrad, try dissembling a chicken with your bare hands.  Yes, a live chicken!
     If we could easily dig trenches in other folk with our hands, then likely the knife, hatchet and spear would never have been invented, and people would be politer to each other at bus stops.

Cyprus
Someone happened to mention this Mediterranean island in passing yesterday and Conrad, focussed as always on everything except what he ought to be doing, immediately realised that it gets barely a mention in Thucydides "History of the Peloponnesian War".  A check of the Index revealed four mentions only, and this is the third biggest island in the Med.

A beach on Cyprus
<sigh>

     Now, given that the ancient Greeks were at the time quite prepared to line up and kill each other whilst the daylight lasted - no electric power 2,500 years ago, people - Conrad did wonder why they didn't wage war against Cyprus, or why the island didn't obviously declare itself either for Athens or Sparta.
     Because, it seems, it was occupied by the Persians, scions of that regional superpower and long an enemy of Greece.  Aggressive the Greeks might be, stupid they were not - Only One Major War At A Time was probably an aphorism of theirs.

"The Millionaires Unit"
Not enjoying this so far.  Dull, if one is honest.  Conrad appreciates that the author has to set the scene, yet reading about the monied at play at Yale is stultifyingly uninteresting to your modest artisan.  Just because someone is a millionaire does not, of itself, make them interesting by default.  

Take this chap.  Not a penny to his name, but interesting

     If the book doesn't shape up soon it's going back on the shelf and I shall move on.

"6th Battalion The Manchester Regiment" By John Hartley
Now this is more like it and there are no millionaires present.  I recognise every local place name and quite a few of the streets mentioned.  Yankee's yachting at Yale?  Foo!  Manc footie players!

Local Manchester street names lower right corner

     The above is a photograph of a locally-produced Trench Map of the Manchester's position on the Galipolli peninsula.  Marked "Secret", it shows "Ardwick Green", "Stretford Road" and "Oldham Road" in the lower right hand corner - all local roads and Oldham being one I travel on daily.
     I think the poseur's phrase for it would be "Genius Locii" - spirits of place.

Another Of Conrad's Guilty Pleasures
Guns, basically.  Your gifted author has either a keen interest or a worrying obsession with firearms, not that he's actually ever used one - this is the UK, after all, old chap - or is likely to.  Hence his interest in Youtube presentations by "Forgotten Weapons", an American arms business that specialises in obscure, unusual, rare or odd guns.  Here we have a screenshot of the Reising M55:

Scott, totally rocking the beard-and-bullets look

     Lightweight and reasonably cheap, the South Canadian Marines used it to the tune of 10,000.  It was problematic because it was never designed for mass-production, meaning all sorts of flaws came out in the wash.
     One thing that Scott demonstrated wonderfully well was this weapon's rate of fire.  My "Encyclopedia of Infantry Weapons of The Second Unpleasantness" states this was 550 rounds per minute.  Wrong - closer to 850 to 900 r.p.m. when fired in real life.




* Christmas 2013
** But that would be telling.
*** We shall gloss over the undead cannibal psycho schoolkids