BOOJUM!: Kind Of Pink

No! Not An "In Memoriam" About Rick Wright

(Keyboard player in Pink Floyd and the only person to see a profit during "The Wall" tour).

Rather, a referral back to the Pink Panther Land Rover as used by the Special Air Service at the beginning of the Sixties, before they got kitted-up with more modern NATO weapons. Art?

Postal deliveries in the rougher parts of Glasgow could be problematic -

Anyone not interested in guns may move along smartly. The weapon to port is a Bren gun, using NATO standard rimless ammo; you can tell because the magazine lacks the old distinctive curve to accomodate the old British .303 rimmed cartridge. The twin guns on the starboard are a story in themselves: they are Vickers "K" guns, developed from the Vickers-Berthier design (see today's earlier post - you were half-right, Michael!) as an aircraft gun for use by crew members, mounted on a pintle. As such they had an extremely high rate of fire, since any enemy aircraft would only be around for seconds in the gunsights; up to 20 rounds per second, or 1,200 per minute. Art?

Someone, somewhere, is about to have an extremely bad day

The original SAS in North Africa "acquired" a ton of these guns, that they "found" lying around in a military storehouse, "unused". I don't suppose anyone cared to argue with them once they were on those jeeps. You can imagine the scene -

CHINLESS STAFF OFFICER (wearing an impeccable uniform): I say, these Special Air Service wallahs have stolen a ton of hardware from the RAF. It's simply not on!

SAS ARTIFICER (unshaven and in grubby fatigues): What are you going to do about it <long pause> sir?

CSO: I'm jolly well going to get the loot back. Get those stolen guns back!

SAS A: I see.

CSO: Where are they? Eh? Where are they! Where are those rascals?

SAS A: About two hundred and fifty miles behind enemy lines, around the oasis at Jarabub, sir.

CSO: Ah - no hurry about it, be seeing you, bye.

During the mid-Sixties those venerable Vickers were replaced by the mighty Jimpy (G.P.M.G.) in the next-generation Pink Panthers.

TWO thumbs up? We are praised indeed!

Now, all that remains is to wire up the motley to that kite with a steel cable and send it out into the thunderstorm!

I'm Having Second Thoughts

That righteous font of all that is fit to read, the BBC website, had an interesting article crop up earlier in the week under their Science headline, about a South Canadian scientist and his pursuit of time travel. Art?

Professor Mallett's sideline in executive toys was a profitable one -

This fellow is no tinfoil-hat wearing swivel-eyed loonwaffle, but a respected professor of physics, and he has proposed a method of warping space-time by use of a laser array. I believe that physicists hold that what is not forbidden is possible - though perhaps not feasible - and that one day time travel forward or backward can be achieved.
That, of course, leads one to the inevitable question: if time travel IS possible, then where are all those time travellers from the future?

APART from you, smarty-pants.

Given the appalling havoc that a slapdash timetraveller may cause by going back in time, it may be that the future world government ~~(based in Mumbai, apparently)~~ FORGET YOU READ THAT have, a la "Looper", immediately banned it and only a severely restricted number of officially-sanctioned visits can be made. Or, such visits are allowed, but only if the travellers undergo extensive training and preparation so that they don't mess up the timelines.

As in this film

So - that lady at the bus stop, that youth on the tram - either or both of them might be from the far distant future and the reason they're staring at you is because they're cultural anthropologists.*
And did you see what I did in that title? "Second" when - O you did and you're not impressed.

KILLER EELS!
I didn't post any pictures in my earlier blab today about the Netflix "Lost in Space", so I thought I'd better remedy that. Here is one, getting it on with one of the Robinsons. Art!