Salem's Latte

I Thought That One Up All By Myself
Can you tell?  <damn it, there goes that Star Trek door squeak again!> Okay, make sure you are paying attention, because only that way will your descendants avoid slavery in the uranium mines.  Okay, yesterday we highlighted the particular date of 1968.  I would like to further define that as 20th August 1968.
     Now that we've sorted that out, let us return to "The Bridge At Remagen", and immediately change the subject to - LIGNITE MINING!

The Most with the mostest.  Plus lignite

     Back when it was still Czechoslovakia, the government, although nominally Communist, was in reality only the very lightest shade of pink.  They also wanted to get rid of the town of Most in order to begin an open-cast mine, mining - treacle.  No!  Sorry, lignite.  I meant lignite. 

Then again ...

 They put the word about and Hay Pesto!  Hollywood expressed an interest in staging the war fillum TBAR in Czechoslovakia.
     "Do you mind if we blow things up?" asked Hollywood, politely.
     "Not at all!" responded Prague.  "The more you blow up or burn down, the less work there is for us.  Go right ahead."
     Which the film crew did.  If you see buildings being blown up or exploded apart in TBAR, rest assured that this is not the wretched Hollywood flame-pot at work, those buildings really are being blown to bits*.
     Now well into shooting, there occurred a bit of a problem:  THE SOVIET INVASION OF CZECHOSLOVAKIA!  In fact !!

"Welcome to Prague!  Now eff off home again.

     Those crowds are jeering, not cheering.
     Not waiting to see how things turned out, the TBAR cast and crew legged it over the border into Austria quick smart, taking the completed film reels with them.  This is a good thing, as the Sinisters would probably have shot them.  As it was, the KGB, probably with their fingers crossed, loudly and proudly displayed all the film military props and kit as "evidence" that the South Canadians were preparing a coup d'état.

An Introduction To Siege Warfare
Because you never know when you might need to besiege your annoying neighbours, and won't you look a fool if you don't know a circumvallation from a contravallation.
     You can comfortably divide siege warfare into pre- and post-gunpowder eras, so we shall examine pre-gunpowder first.
     During this time the most powerful weapons used torsion power for generating kinetic energy, and tended to propel their missiles in a parabola.  The Trebuchet (also our font here at BOOJUM!) is an example of this.  

Hooray for the trebuchet!

There were weapons that fired their projectiles in a flat trajectory, which were a lot less powerful than the ballistic versions.  They were up against defences that tended to be tall and made of stone. 

The Gastraphetes

 It would take a considerable length of time to reduce these effectively with missile weapons, so other tactics were tried, in concert and solo.  These were:
     1)  Biological.  You would catapult dead dog's carcasses over the battlements, hoping to spread disease and despondence amongst the defenders, or at the very least making them wince at the smell.

Cats, too, Jenny.  Cats, too.

     2)  Mining.  You would dig beneath the fortification's foundation, propping up the stonework with wooden beams, then setting them all on fire at once.  The battlements would then collapse, as would the defenders morale.  The Greeks used to calculate that a fifty-yard gap needed to be made to effectively undermine a fortification; it was not unknown for the besiegers to pretend to have undermined this amount, causing a surrender.
     3)  Treachery.  My favourite!  You bribed or threatened an insider to accidentally open the gates whilst some of your stout chaps are loitering with intent.

Thalassemia
This came up as an item on the Beeb website, about a disease which doughty scientists have conquered.  Ha, take that, disease!  Apparently it causes one's red blood cells to spontaneously explode.
     This actually makes a grim kind of sense, as Conrad recognised "Thalassa" - it is Greek for "The sea", and it comes at the end of Xenophon's Tourist Guide To Fighting Your Way Across A Hostile Persia, a.k.a. The Anabasis.  

GPS unavailable

When the remaining warriors of the 10,000 spot the Black Sea in the distance, they know they are saved and shout out "The sea!  The sea!"
     So, if your blood is being rendered all watery and feeble, because all the erythrocytes are exploding, then that is very Thalassemic.
     For your information, "Erythrocytes" come from the Greek for "Red".




*  Very satisfying it is too.

A High Win In Jamaica

No!  That Is Not A Typo
But it is a Typho.  Bear with me, this one will take a bit of explaining.  Okay, so you know that currently your humble scribe is creating blog titles that have something to do with either tea or coffee?  Today we go for tea, and the Typhoo brand thereof.  I think we need a bit of pictorial verisimilitude.  Art?

There you go

     Okay.  Typhoo.  What nautical weather phenomena does this name come close to?
     NO!  Not subterranean volcanic acticity.  "Typhoon".  Art?

Hmmm.  Interesting choice, Art.  BUT WRONG!

     <sounds of Tazer artillery being powered up>

Better.

     There you have the awesomeness of a tropical typhoon.  Of course, Typhoo lack the final letter.  So, what film title reflects a tropical storm?  "A High Wind In Jamaica", except to fit in with the tea puns, we have to omit the last letter of "Wind".  Hence the blog title.
     There you go, a pun analysed to death.  And beyond, even.

"The Bridge At Remagen"
I rewatched this film again, and it bears watching carefully, for a good few reasons.  Firstly, the military kit used is authentic period stuff, not <shudders> the usual post-war South Canadian stuff painted grey.  Remember those cod-Hanomag half-tracks in "Kelly's Heroes"?  <pokes Art with electric cattle prod>

They're trying, bless 'em

     Well, TBAR has several real ones.  I suspect that this is because they were filming in Czechoslovakia, where the locals had hung onto the ex-Teuton real things.  Art?

Two of them

     Notice how different they are from the <ahem> other version.  Okay, let us look at the opening scenes for TBAR.  Art?

     The photo I originally wanted to use has camera flash on it.  The purpose was to show how many vehicles there were, all stooging towards that bridge.  Tanks, half-tracks, jeeps, mobile anti-aircraft guns, trucks, weapons carriers, a whole plethora of stuff.  Still, that shot above gives you a sense of what's going on.  
     They don't really blow the bridge up, either.  The shot fades out as the smoke begins to clear, so I suspect this is all special effects.  Real-time real world stuff, mind, as this was decades before CGI: 1968*.
     One name in the credits also stood out:  Hal Needham.  He was a legendary stuntman, who invented lots of now-standard stunt processes, and was a whiz at vehicle stunts.  Take this one -

Ouch!

     This involves driving a truck at speed, creating a huge explosion in the rear as it's supposed cargo explodes, having it swerve off the road and into and through a concrete barrier, then plunge down the bank - without driving into the river - all whilst on fire.  If that was Hal in there, he was earning every single cent of his $25,000 fee.
     That will do for TBAR for today.  Don't worry, we are coming back here again.
     Stop whining, Art!  Remember, that which does not kill us makes us stronger.

"The Centauri Device" By M. John Harrison
I can't remember why I was looking this up again, but I did.  So there.  It's a sci-fi novel from 1975 that is a savage put-down of the old space-opera genre, featuring (as MJH says) a combination of drugs actual, political and spiritual.  It's one of the "SF Masterworks" series.
     Here an aside.  If you happen to fall into conversation with my good friend Jeff Beck, never, EVER EVER mention "Hi Ho Silver Lining", his greatest commercial success, because he absolutely hates the flipping thing and will probably punch you in the face.
     So it is with MJH.  He detests TCD and considers it about the worst thing he's written.
     Art?

The edition I bought originally in 1976.
Because of the space-opera cover.  Sorry, MJH.

     Surprise!  He's wrong.  It's a corking novel, although perhaps not one for smaller humans, as the Tut Factor is prettttty high.  Also, the best cover art I've seen for it is this one.  Art?

Cover by Fred Gambino

     Fred really nails it here.  I know, I know, that's John Truck not wearing his snakeskin combat jacket, but it really hits the sense of a man at the end of his tether, facing the efficient and nameless minions of Eeevil.  All hi-tec hi-rise in the background, grubby stained concrete in the foreground.  IIRC, the artwork continues on the rear cover.  I like this cover so much I am thinking about paying £5 for a paperback edition, which is expensive because it's in France.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Centauri_Device

     The Wiki link.

O wow.  At count.  Well, there you go.

Finally -


Mum and Dad say "Hello!"


*  This is crucial.  Remember that date.