Crisis In The Caucasus!

Anarchy In Andreivia!
Or, Business As Usual.  Andreivia is the fictional nation on the shores of the Black Sea, stretching back into the mountains of the Caucasus, that my friend and all-round wargamer Richard invented, so he could use lots of kit that wasn't historically used together at the same time.  After independence from the Soviet Union arrived in 1991, there is usually conflict going on between the Government's armed forces, the paramilitary police, Turkish militias, Armenian militias, occasional NATO task forces, jihadis and Russians trying their luck, in any combination.

Somewhere round here -

     This time, however, we went back to the very beginning of modern Andreivia's tortuous existence, back in 1918/19, when the First World War had finished but a whole lot of other minor skirmishes were taking place.  The Andreivian forces had to contend with invading Ottoman troops on two fronts, a British force retreating from the Ottomans, White Russian forces, Bolshevik Russian invaders and local terrorists/freedom-fighters who were Bolshevik Andreivians.  Art?

Downtown Tcherbevan
(capital of Andreivia)

      Here we have 'Woosterforce', commanded by yours truly with a mixture of bad luck and ineptitude.  Art?

     That river plays a significant role later on.  Here you can see the mule train, steam truck, Royal West Cheshires, Highland Light Infantry, Australian Light Horse and armed cars.
     I don't want to egg the pudding too much, so that's all of Andreivia for this post.  We shall come back to it later on, never fear!*

"The Meg"
Oh dearie me.  There I am, ploughing a lonely furrow in trying to rehabilitate the reputation of the shark, which is an uphill struggle, I can tell you (I can't think of an appropriate marine metaphor for "uphill" so bear with me on that) - and what do I see in a trailer on IMDB?
     "The Meg".  A film where a 70 foot shark, Carcharodon Megalodon, is the villain.  
     "But Conrad," I hear you query.  "There are so many, many poor quality films out there which feature The Shark As Villain".  What difference does one more make?"

"From the producers of 'Sand Sharks'" - as if that's a good thing!

     The budget, for one thing.  This picture cost $150,000,000, which is probably partly a function of filming at sea, which is always expensive.  Having a budget that big means an equally big distribution AND PUBLICITY budget as well, so this thing is going to be all over the place in a couple of months.  All my good work undone.
     Bah!**

More Of 'The (Enlarged) Devil's Dictionary' By Ambrose Bierce
When originally published, this bitingly satirical lexicon had 1,000 entries and was considered to be complete, because it had been put together by Bierce himself.
     However.  An Emeritus Professor of Journalism, one Ernest Jerome Hopkins, discovered in 1963 that Bierce had begun writing TDD at least 10 years earlier than supposed.  There were a lot of gaps in TDD, which he realised had been caused by Bierce putting together the work when living on the East Coast, unable to access the West Coast newspapers he had been writing for since the 1860's.

An example

     You can see where this is going, can't you?  EJH got a research grant and trawled through literally tons of newspapers via microfiche - these were the days long before internet archives, matey, when archive work was work indeed - and gradually assembled a mass of new entries for TDD, making the work as complete as possible.  His new entries totalled 851, almost doubling the length and eliding the old manuscript.

Typical Ol' Am!

     I know what you're thinking - "Poor old EJH, what a trial and a torment having to sort and sift all that newsprint!"
     Well you may think it cruel and unusual punishment, I think "What a lucky git!"***

Finally -
Just a short piece, as we need a bit of filler to reach count.  Okay, you know that Conrad has an unhealthy interest in guns and can generally ID anything he sees on screen, although experience has taught him not to fly into a frothing rant at how "That gun is incorrect for that time period!  Yark yark bark bark - (cont. Page 96)".  So it was with some interest that I came across an automatic rifle know as the 'Huot' after the chap who invented it.  Art?

The beast in question

     It was a British American design, utilising the body of the recently-scrapped Ross rifle, and was an excellent all-round design that was much, much cheaper and less fussy than the Lewis Gun.  General Currie, commander of the British American troops in France, wanted 5,000 of them straightaway, and he'd have got them too, except -
     - the First Unpleasantness promptly ended.
     Oh well.



*  Or perhaps fear
**  Ironically the star is Jason Statham, who was a champion competition swimmer back in the day.
***  For those of you not familiar with English slang, you may read this as "O fortunate chap"