Immobilised By Sog

Yes, That's A Typo
Although, since it's deliberate, I'm not sure if it counts as a typo.  I refer, of course, to the undeclared (though undisputed) Queen of The Mansion, Edna.  She got her retaliation against the hated laptop in early, and is now ensconced on my lap, meaning that I dare not venture into the kitchen to stir my Diabetes Cookbook Paprika Goulash.  I chose "Sog" as "s" is next to "d" on the keyboard.  Art?

In her rightful place - at least in her mind

     Now, although Conrad has no compunction whatsoever in utilising cute animals to boost traffic, this is - as ever! - aimed at Wonder Wifey, who will be winging her way home later this evening, after wowing them across the Pond in the south of South Canada.  She has been missing her munchkin, apparently, so tomorrow Edna is going to be spoilt silly - three walks before tea-time?
     Okay, time to dangle the motley off a motorway bridge on a bungee cord!*

A Bit Of Perspective
This came to your humble scribe whilst taking Edna for her second walk (thus scoring brownie points) and contemplating the heavens.  Earlier today I had posted about the battle of Cambrai, an event during the First Unpleasantness, which is famous for the first massed use of tanks - although the equally important use of artillery without the normal registration firing tends to get overlooked.

"We are very cross!" said the gunners

     That led to the realisation that our perspective on this event is now a century old, which is quite telling, as the First Unpleasantness, when it broke out, was a century beyond the last general European Unpleasantness, that of Napoleon.

Are you sure about this, Art?

     However, and a "however" in letters ten feet tall, the lessons of Cambrai in terms of integrated, combined-arms operations, are still with us today.  Modern mechanised warfare, though it uses technology that would have been science-fiction to the battlefield warriors of 1917, would still be comprehensible to them.  The tactics of Ol' Nappy, however, died a death in 1914.
     Makes you think, doesn't it?**

Art For Heart's Sake
My good friend Colin, he whose passions include painting and motorbikes, declaimed earlier today about the horrible people posting horrid things on Facebook, horridly mind.  Well, yes, that is the nature of you Homo Sapiens - ever ones to find a fetid lining inside that cloud of AgN3.  His suggested compensation was to put the name of a favourite artist into Google Images and admire what came up.
     No!  Heironymous Bosch is not my favourite artist.  How dare you make such an assumption!

Not enlarged as it probably contains quite naughty stuff

     Here an aside.  Ol' Heiny was born in 's-Hertogenbosch, a town in the south of Holland The Netherlands, which is where your humble scribe worked in a pickle factory in the early Eighties.  Clearly, there is some higher power at work here.  Barney perhaps?
     
     There will now be a slight pause as I go to stir the Goulash.  Be patient!

     Okay, Goulash stirred.  What I was about to post was my use of the name "Giovanni Batista Piranesi" on Google images.  For those of you who are not familiar, GBP was an Italian artist of the 18th century, who specialised in lithography.  It's a bit difficult to pin down his genre, exactly, as he was notable for depicting the ruins of Rome, contemporary architecture, and wild imaginary dungeons.  Yes, really.  Art?

"The Round Tower"

     This is from a series he did entitled "Carceri Divenzione" or "Imaginary Dungeons", which probably says more about GBP than he'd care to know.  They are strikingly imaginative, however, and have stuck with me since I first encountered them, forty years ago.
      Here's one of the architectural ones, depicting the construction of Blackfriars Bridge in London.  Art?


     I do possess a small book of GBP's work, which doesn't really do it justice - stuff like this needs to be A3 sized at least.
     Well, I don't know about you, but that's cheered me up no end!

Finally -
I do like to adhere to the terms that Facebook continually puts up from when BOOJUM! began, all the way back in 1997, about "astronomy, tanks, tanks and more tanks - " if I remember correctly.  And even if I don't.  
     So!  Take a look at a Borgward IV, which Art will illustrate for us - 

A nifty little runabout

     This is actually a giant mobile bomb, where the superstructure next to that soldier is really a whopping big pile of explosives.  The idea was that a driver would manouevre this beast up close to a minefield or set of barbed wires, then guide it in to detonation point via radio control.
     Driving a giant mobile bomb - I wonder how they got people to volunteer for that?



*  Don't worry.  Physics.  It anything hits it, the motley will recoil, and probably survive.
**  Or - it's just me, isn't it?  Damn.