I've Dried Or Died - So FORMALDEHYDE!

Hopefully Not Reaching Too Much
They do rhyme, though, honestly.
     Initially I was going to embark on a rant here, about the anachronistic weapons that appear in "Game of Shadows".  Instead I will go off at a tangent*, and observe that Sherlock Holmes - for it is he that the film centres about - is caught drinking formaldehyde by Doctor Watson, who exclaims incredulously "You're drinking embalming fluid?!" 

If not the breakfast of champions, certainly the cocktail of idiots

(a common mistake, actually, since embalming fluid contains more than formaldehyde).
     Conrad would like to point out here that I did mention Bela Lugosi's fondness for this substance, which was because, I believe, his liver no longer worked.  Why SH would resort to this toxic tipple is a bit of a mystery, because -

Health and Safety Warning:  DRINKING FORMALDEHYDE WILL KILL YOU!  KILL YOU DEAD!  VERY DEAD INDEED!!!

     Now we've got the PC brigade out of the way, your corpse would probably look pretty good, except for that "dead" part.  Remember Bela.  And SH is indestructible**.
     Conrad presumes there must be a plus for those foolish or desperate enough to guzzle this poisonous potion.  However, because he is fond of life, and especially his own, trying it is a no-no.

There's a reason it's used to pickle dead things

Today's Tale Of Total Trauma
Yes, my voyage workward on that rarest of beasts, at least after the timetable revision, the First 24 bus.  Okay, I exaggerate the "Total Trauma" but come on, a chap's got to bait the readers somehow!
     I have alleged that First are incapable of hitting the three basic tick boxes of a public service vehicle now that schools are back.  To wit:  arriving on time; being a double-decker; having a copy of The Metro on board.
     So today:  Double decker?  Yes.
                     The Metro?   Yes.
                     On time?  No.
     It came early, but since your humble scribe takes pains to get to the bus stop earlier than early, nothing went agley, at least until I got on board.  There was an hideous high-pitched hum coming from a faulty light, and the windscreen wipers were squeaking like a bag of mice in a mincer***.  So I had recourse to the 21st Century's best gadget ever, my i-pod.

First Bus Spokesdemon:"We alsssso like the idea of mice in a mincer.  Hilarious!"

Further To Really Bad Ideas Of 1812
Burning down the Whitehouse was probably not the best way of getting the South Canadians to sue for peace, plus it gave them that song "The Star-Spangled Banner" and a load of tosh about rockets and bombs.  Really!  Being invaded, you'd think they invented it.

The British: not to be trusted with matches

     Which is only tangentially related to what I actually intended to post about, that being "Napoleon's Invasion Of Russia" by Paul B. Austin.  See? Invasions of 1812?  Look at the effort I put into this stuff.
     Yesterday I mentioned several reasons why invading Russia is a really bad idea.  Having to deal with lots of big angry Russians is quite off-putting in itself.  Then, as mentioned in NIOR, you have the weather:  parching in summer, freezing-and-then-some in winter.  Over the space of two appalling frozen nights in November, totally snowbound, with practically no shelter, the French lose one-third of their entire army to the weather.
     Did I already mention that invading Russia is a Really Bad Idea?
     That's not where the story ends.  Oh no.  In concert with General Winter, you also have General Mud.  We are not talking about spatterings that dirty your shoes here, because the "roads" in Napoleonic Russia were dirt tracks that became bottomless swamps in wet weather.  When you have tens of thousands of men tramping a track, followed by thousands of wagons, hundreds of artillery pieces and thousands of carriages, you can imagine what havoc General Mud caused, especially at bottlenecks.

Cossacks about to deliver traditional Russian hospitality to their French brethren

Katy Lied
Because I need an article of about a hundred words to reach tonight's count, and because I plan to use this to rhyme in my promotional posts on FB and Twitter, I have chosen an album by Steely Dan.  Art?

Quite what this hideous insect has to do with Katie, or lying, beats me

     This is quite a challenge, as I've not heard it and know nothing at all about it.  Allow me to Wiki a little knowledge out of teh interwebz.
     Okay, strike that.  I have got it, and have heard it.  In fact, since my i-pod needs charging, I shall stick it on the pod-dock and play the album.  In my defence I am old, and that formalin plays havoc on the memory.  Cider!  Cider, not formalin.



*  A bit of a trademark, I'm afraid.
**  SPOILER!  - because he's a fictional character
*** OOh!  I like that.  I may use it again.