I Can Handel It

Ha!
Soon - oh so soon - you the readers* will be pining for the days when your humble scribe made bad jokes about films and tea.  Or coffee, if it required a bit of a stretch.  Now - quiver in fear at the classical music trope!  I shall try to steer clear of vegetable jokes that reference Ludwig Van, as he stands in high regard at The Mansion, and let us get that cartoon joke out of the way - "Gone to lunch - Bach in a Minuet".

It beets me

     None of which has anything to do with CANADIAN MACHINE GUN TACTICS OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR! which we will come back to, although not just yet.
     The title refers to the musician George Frederick Handel, who was another of those busy baroque composers, with a vast catalogue of works behind him.  Born a Teuton, he later relocated to the Allotment of Eden and became a citizen - proof of his impeccable taste as well as musical talent.  Sorry, Germany!

Either wearing a wig or a snow volcano

      "What is this almost-unheard of intellectual divertissement?"  I hear you ask.  Pausing only to point out that you were using a thesaurus, as otherwise you'd have no idea what a diversion in French was, I shall explicate.

BOOJUM! writ large

     This is a consequence of driving to work, again a consequence of domiciling Edna with Zoey, whom is assured of her reward in heaven.  Driving to work involves listening to Radio 3, that I may not descend into Frothing Nitric Ire due to traffic and use the atomic howitzer to clear a path along the A627.
     "What is that sound?" I quoth, hearing a musical item that Gavin McLoud, the Radio 3 Disk Jockey had put forward.  "It is opera, yet I disliketh it not.**"  For it is a touchstone that your modest artisan detests opera in all it's eldritch forms.
     But no.  This was "Se pieta di me non senti" by Ol' Gorgy, from his opera which we in the Allotment would call "Julius Caesar" although the pawky Italian is "Giulio Cesare", which you'll agree is nowhere near as imposing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4vB6DaJfQw

     There is a link to a performance of same, that you may sit in judgement.

Close enough?

     Enough culture!  Such as it is.  Having thrown the motley into the back of a cement mixer, let us now add cement!

A Tower Of Terror
As you surely know by now, your humble scribe is worryingly obsessed/sincerely interested/under the eye of MI5 about military history, and has been plodding through the Official War Diary of the 6th Canadian Infantry Brigade Machine-Gun Company, for several months.  Not only that, as with all the best saddoes/anoraks/diligent researchers, he matches one work with another.  Hence - Art?

That's terrifying, right?

     This is because the War Diary mentioned a 'Colonel Brutinel', and because your humble scribe is such a pedantic hair-splitter/memory sponge/thoroughly nice person, I recalled that name from other memoirs.  I checked Wiki, which in turn took it's information from that seminal publication "Battle Tactics of the Western Front" by Paddy Griffiths, which you can see at the very bottom of that tower of books.

     Here an aside.  Paddy, bless his sadly expired boots, was very much the detached professional in the body of his work, but his indexed notes were barbed, citric and waspish!  
     
Right.  I have an early start tomorrow, so it's time to go scrape bristles and anoint the skin with sulphuric acids, the better to - NO! - sorry, Homo Sapiens readers not to follow suit, you do not have skin made of polarised silicon.

"Stopping Guns"
Or, how to be a big bore without putting people to sleep***.  This is not about preventing people from collecting firearms, quite the opposite.  Let us introduce that Hippy From Hell, Ian from Forgotten Weapons, wielding a set of formidable firearms.  Art?

     These monstrous things are 4-bore Stopping guns.  You could do someone an injury simply by hitting them over the head with a cartridge for one of these things.  Art?

Note protective headgear - he's not getting caught out!

     Here an aside.  The bore size is worked out by how many balls of lead from a 1 lb mass would fill the muzzle of a weapon.  So these would accomodate 4 balls of lead - hence 4 bore.  A 12 bore shotgun would require 12 balls of lead.  Simples!
     "Why would you want something that borders on a breach of the Geneva Convention?" I hear you ask.  "And which requires considerable ear-protection to boot."
     Well, as Ian says, these things are for hunters who really, really really need to stop a charging game animal, in the sense of dropping it dead on the spot, not five yards behind your trampled carcass.



*  All three of them <the horrid truth courtesy Mister Hand>
**  "It's banging" <translation Mister Hand>
*** Er - well, not the Big Sleep.