Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Teacrets

I Seem To Have Hit On Something
Quite what remains to be seen - but the blog traffic is high today, possibly because I punned about Harry Potter, lead character in a series of mildly successful novels.  Sorry, typo, that should read "wildly".  Since she came out of nowhere with no background in literature, Conrad feels Ol' J. K. Rowling deserves all that loose change she's earned.
     So -

Pimp for me, Harry!  

     I have read it, back when Darling Daughter was still young and cute, and all I remember is that there are - spiders?  A phoenix?  And a Basilisk.
     I may have to pop off in the immediate future, as I've put the oven on to cook some delicious remaindered offal that was going cheap several days ago.
     There we go, that's the ice broken and since we're all such terrific chums now, the misshapen hulk of the motley can be pushed off the beach.

Further Fun With The Most Boring Hobby In The World
Yes, we are back to playing the IMDB Goofs game, and once again we are squeezing every ounce of content out of "Kelly's Heroes" as we can.
     One glaring error that this, and a whole lot of other films about the Second Unpleasantness, make, is having far too many Teuton footsloggers armed with the MP40 sub-machine gun.  Art?

Example number 1

     These were issued out to NCO's or officers, not indiscriminately to every stubble-hopper going.  Your Teuton footslogger tended to be armed with a Kar98, which Hollywood tends to ignore or overlook; it's cooler to blast away on full automatic than watch someone labouriously cranking a rifle bolt back and forth, right?

"Where Eagles Dare" is also guilty

     Right, there will now be a short pause as I go and eat some hot food.  Later!

     Ah, that's better.  I feel more like one of you*.

Shakespoke
And once again we lay into the Barf of Avon.  As you can see, I harbour considerable resentment of Windbag Willy, for making the days of my education considerable more tedious than they would otherwise be.  
      Enough background - let the mockery begin!

"Once more unto the breach, dear friends."

I don't think I like where this speech ends,

For laying a medieval siege is entirely no fun,

Especially with you and your aggression.

     The speech goes on to mention "English dead" which would have rather annoyed the large contingents of Welsh bowmen who went on King Henry's martial day trips.     

"Once more unto the breach, dear friends."

I'll tell you how to bring this siege to an end.

Whistle up a cannon and have it pound those walls.

It's easy enough if you have great big balls.

     NO SNIGGERING AT THE BACK!  We are still SFW as Conrad is of course referring to cannon balls.  What you find by 1415 - the date at which Bill's "Henry V" is set - is that cannon firing stone or iron projectiles have arrived.  They are not common, and their huge size and weight makes them difficult to deploy on a battlefield, and it's dangerous having great big barrels of gunpowder amongst your siege train, but they are effective.  Art?

Mons Meg

     Mons is a bit later than 1415, but it gives you an idea of the size of such a bombard.  It comes in at 6 tons, proving what I said about weight and portability.  Each cannon ball weighs 350 pounds.  The reason monsters like this were effective is because they had only just arrived on the scene, whereas the castles they were used against had been designed sometimes centuries before.  Thus their curtain walls proved to be highly vulnerable to massive high-velocity rounds.

Essentially just a great big target

     Well, we seem to have diverted a little from humiliating the Hack and onto the subject of siege warfare.  

Well, You Asked!
Over on The Flop House FB page, someone asked what 'Micro-genre" other members were into, so I told them.

Official unit histories of British & Commonwealth formations from the First World War. Currently plodding through the "6th Canadian Infantry Brigade Machine Gun Company"'s official diary at present. To me - fascinating stuff. To everyone else - a cruel and unusual punishment.

     I'm 40 pages in so far, and it all makes perfect sense.  I can also re-use an old photograph, which causes me no end of amused smug satisfaction.

     And there we are at count.  Chin chin and Ha Det**!

*  That is to say, a human.
**  "Goodbye" in Norwegian