Wouldn't It Be Ice

To Coin A Phrase
Why, I think there might be a song title in there somewhere!* as performed by some achingly wholesome male band, projecting an air of have just come out of the backwoods to go to Sunday school - The Beech Goys?
     Okay, this one might take a bit of time to develop, like a fine wine/an hideous disease/a secret ballistic nuclear weapons program (delete where applicable)so bear with me.     

Excuse me a minute -

     Here an aside - it was mention of bears that did it.  I came across a reference to these yesterday, from a Facebook post where someone was pining for these things.  I can show you what they looked like, if Art will put down his angle-grinder and spent nuclear fuel rod -

Erk!

     Apparently you can't buy these any more, at which parents, diabetics and dentists all heave a sigh of relief.
     Okay, back to our scheduled scrivel.  You may recall me going on about a book version of Arthur C. Clarke's television program, entitled "ACC's World of Weird Guff" or similar, and one mystery was about two Royal Navy ships that had gone missing.
     Don't dash outside with a lantern and loudspeaker, they disappeared in 1845, off the north coast of British America, whilst looking for the fabled Northwest Passage.  This was a route from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, which that dullard Art can illustrate -

They call it "Canada".  How quaint!

     At the time ACC was writing nobody knew for sure what had happened to the ships nor their crews, although - you may be ahead of me here - given that the book was written 139 years after the event, it was doubtful anyone survived.
     Well, both HMS Terror and HMS Erebus have since been found, and here is a map to illustrate the point.  Art?

Their resting places 

     They were originally abandoned when stuck in the ice, and then were carried south and sank, leaving no trace on the surface.  Their crews perished whilst trying to find a way back to civilisation, and that was the end of the Franklin expedition.
     However.  Yes, we have a proviso.  From the above you can see one of the problems about the Northwest Passage: ice.  Lots of it, all year round, in considerable depth, meaning that Franklin didn't have a chance of establishing a trade route from east to west, all the more so in ships that lacked modern ice-breaking capabilities.

A static oil rig is at rather less risk, as you don't expect it to go swanning o'er the briny deeps

  This sticking point about ice is no longer the problem it once, was, thanks to -
     GLOBAL WARMING!  
     Enter the canny Norks, who have brine in their veins where normal humans have blood.  Their vessel Nordic Orion is too big to transit the Panama Canal, so - thanks to a shrinking ice-cap - they used the Northwest Passage from west to east.  Art?

Norwegians: not afraid of ice

     Ha!  Take that, Panama Canal!

 - Hat is sad

     Now, all we need to do is seal the motley inside the water-filled glass tank with a pick-axe, and see if it can manage to break the walls!**

Pigging In
Yes, you read that correctly. No, it's not a mistake.  For those of you unfortunate to live outside the blessed Pond Of Eden (it being horribly wet today), "pigging out" is a colloquialism that applies to those being greedy, as with Conrad sitting down to devour 12 pounds of condemned remaindered offal in a single sitting.

To you: an offal accident.  To Conrad: meals on wheels!

     Okay, let us shift to the oil business, where time is money, and money is money, where time is tight*** and money, too.  Why, I think there might be a song in there!  Something by a bunch of strident lefties - Chumbawamba are you listening?
     Where were we?  Dammit, having a party going on in your head 24/7 is very distracting!  Oh yes, oil pipelines. As you no doubt know already, these can suffer a build up of deposits or corrosion on their inner surfaces over time, constricting the flow and thus risking profitability.  Horrors! 

A nightmare in any language

     In Victorian times the eeeevil employers might have resorted to stopping the oil flow, then putting a small child into the pipe with a wire brush, a wet rag and a jelly baby (two if they were feeling generous). Not so today, because human rights are so highly prized profits: stop the oil flow and you are risking profitability.  Horrors!
     Enter the dragon pig.  Art?

A grate big pig

     I think we've had enough high-octane^ thrills with pipeline pigs for one day.  More of this anon.

The Schadenfreude, It Gives One A Warm And Cosy Feeling
Oh yes indeedy.  Cast your mind back to that festival fiasco, the Fyre Festival, which was promoted by supermodels on a yacht with some rapper, and which was going to be the bee's knees, ankles and toes to boot.
     The reality was rather less impressive.  There is an hilarious expose from an organiser who details the utter unpreparedness of the "organisers" - search back BOOJUM!s and you'll find it - who could not build a sandcastle in the Sahara, nor find water in the North Sea.  They ought to have taken a year in planning, arranging, building and contracting acts, instead of which they took the advice of some junior buffoon who said "Let's just do it and be legends!"

Legendarily BAD.

     It turns out the idiot/scammer in charge was freed on bail, and promptly went on to carry out another ticketing scam.  One wonders at his thought processes: "Wow, yes, this scam will really impress the judge, showing how committed I am to my chosen line of work, which is integrity-free truth-lite enterpreneurialism.^^"
     He is now about to serve 6 years in prison, where the accomodation and food will undoubtedly be better than that arranged at Fyre.

It could have been worse: pictured is the Eerie Canal Soda Pop Festival

Time to cast off the anchors and let the Battle Blimp take to the stormy skies of arcane adventure! or - or was it time to walk to the shops and get some cheese?


*  Yes, yes, I know.  This is me joking, alright?
**  Would it be able to generate enough power in it's swing, thanks to underwater drag?  Who knows! Exciting, hmmm?
***  Booker T. And The M.G.s in-joke there.
^  Do you see what I - O you do.
^^  A.K.A. "Theft"