Badgers And Bisons And Bears Oh My!

I Believe That Skits A Line From "The Wizard Of Oz"
I say "I believe" because I've never actually watched the film.  Musical, you see.  Conrad HATES ALL MUSICALS*!  
     "Gosh!" I can hear you say.  "He's getting off at a tangent pretty early tonight, isn't he?"
     No I am not!
     Okay yes I am.  TWOO has nothing to do with anything else in this entire post, I just wanted to gently break tonight's Intro to you, as it concerns that mammoth tome "On Thermonuclear War" by Herman Kahn.  Having examined the First and Second Unpleasantnesses for possible analogies with contemporary strategy and weapons, Herm is now looking to the years 1951 and 1956, imagining what kind of war might have been fought if it had all kicked off major stylee.  He mentions a whole boatload of kit that we are now familiar with, thanks to Conrad and his worrying infatuation - or keen interest, whichever term disturbs you the least - with atomic foofoodillies:  Regulus, Snark, SAGE, B52, Nike-Hercules and the U2.  Art?

Regulus revs up

Snark.  Hopefully not turning into a BOOJUM!

The age of SAGE

A B52.  Any more and it's be a pop group

Nike-Hercules.  Camouflaged, you see, to blend in ...

     "Ah yes, very educational," I hear you mutter.  "What about the animals you mentioned?"
Well they're not technically animals, rather the code name NATO gave to particular models of the Sinister's aircraft, contemporaries of all the ordnance above.  Art?

A Badger.  Looking quite smooth.

A Bison.

And a Bear.  Note the smooth surface.
(Bear-skinned?)

     That seems to have padded out the length a bit.

Cats
Jenny has sneaked into the Upstairs Lair and is purring smugly over there, convinced of her own cleverness and exuding that "Yes, Human?" attitude that is the basic Cat Default Emotion.
     This has very little to do with the rest of this post - do you see a theme developing here? - except that one of my favourite Danish indie rock bands is called "Mew".  I've been listening to their last album +- again, especially "My Complications" because it has a sublime play out, and of course "Cross The River On Your Own".  I'd put the guitar solo at the end up against anything else from the last thirty years and expect it to win.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDdPF0F5Vz8

     And there's a Youtube link.  Better still, go out and buy the album.

Euro 2016
     <there will now be a short pause as you get back up on your chair>
     No, I'm not talking about the Fussball tournament.
     Actually yes I am.  Just testing**.
     Conrad (that's me for those with a short memory) has been taking note of the towns that the English football team are playing in and remarked on an interesting coincidence - Loos earlier this week, and Lens yesterday.  These are 1915 battlefields of the First Unpleasantness where the Brits did not do terribly well.

"Tower Bridge" - the pithead winding gear at Loos

     We shall see what other sinister coincidences emerge, shall we?

Thank You D.H.!
Yes, I'm breaking the rules of punctuation by having an exclamation mark after a full stop, except whose blog is it?
     Quite.  Now, sit down and take your medicine like a man.  Or a woman.  A human being, anyway.
     Now, on any given day you might expect the abbreviation "D.H." to mean "Douglas Haig", boss-in-chief of the British Army for most of the First Unpleasantness.
     Not today!  No, it stands for "De Humidifier".  Art?

Earl Douglas Haig.  No, hang on -

     This noble device serves a dual purpose at the moment, since the weather is warm; in operation it directs a stream of cool air out of that grill at the back, soothing your humble scribe's blood***.
     Now let me show you a picture of some books.  Art?

"The Official History of the First World War"

     This little lot would probably set you back £1,000 to acquire nowadays, if you can get them.  Prior to acquiring the D.H. there was a serious risk of these works suffering from moisture-induced mould.  Not any more - which is why we offer up thanks to the selfless and sober D.H.

An Anniversary Missed
It quite slipped my mind, but the blog was three years old yesterday.  As usual, I am going to post the first post in it's humble entirety, all 53 words of it:

First post on this newly-created Blog.

I feel like a four-year old riding their new bicycle without stabilisers.  I am, after all, 51 years old and much more familiar with pen and paper - make that fountain-pen and paper - than all this new-fangled digital mummery.

Where were we?  Oh yes, Father's Day.

Drove over to Richard's* to play a pseudo-Franco-Prussian War wargame.  Over the span of 6 hours I got beaten by Andy, playing the French.  Not that he got by cheaply or easily, oh no.  Casualties were high.  And the game turned out to be more balanced than I had first feared; sitting back and crushing the French with awesome Prussian artillery might be historically accurate but my! it would make for a boring game.

*Richard's charming ex-chapel is located in a location so remote it makes The Middle Of Nowhere look like Times Square at rush-hour.

How things have changed!

*  Except for "The Blues Brothers" and "The Return of Captain Invincible"
** What a joker.
***  If you can call it that - made of 50% alcohol 50% lava.