The Big Queasy

I Thought That One Up All By Myself
<pauses to wait for polite appreciative applause, hears only silence, moves on, crushed>


     For yes, we are back to a topic I never, ever thought I'd be propounding on -
     The real-life background to the literature of Charles Dickens.
     Wow!  I sound like a proper literary critic and all.  Watch out that I don't throw in a few pseudy terms as well - 
     Anyway, back to "Martin Chuzzlewit", because we left off yesterday after I had laboured at length to build up a mise en scene from that novel.

The real Eden

     Our titular hero had purchased a property called "Eden", which in reality turned out to be a pestiferous swamp, garlanded with dusty death.  It was the Slough Of Despond made concrete in South Canadian real estate.
     Here an aside.  Ol' Chas thought he was merely poking fun at the South Canadians, which he was, though his "fun" could get a bit peppery at times when commenting on slavery.  The South Canadians did not remotely appreciate his mild satirical confection and were much given to wrathful responses, proving that they can dish it out, but can they take it?

Angry American
(Badger)

     Eden is based upon a real town, that of Cairo, which Ol' Chas had witnessed during his American tour of 1842, and he was not impressed.  You can't blame him: that whole town was built on a fraud that enriched the crooked promoter (Darius Holbrook) and impoverished the investors.  Art, a map!


    It isn't New Orleans, quite, as the maps above prove, yet our city of interest was indeed on the borderlands of the South, hence today's title.  Cairo lived or died at the whim of the Mississippi or Ohio Rivers, and since it was only barely above sea level, it died pretty frequently.  Not until a levee was built around the whole town, a good 30 years after it had been founded, did the risk of being drowned become less of a threat than taxes.  After a brief heyday when it serviced river traffic, Cairo has now sunk into a terminal decline, and seems to be regarded as a ghost town.

     Well, they could always build a pyramid.

Close enough

No noisy neighbours



 

     I can't leave you without observing that, in Egypt's capital, there is indeed what you might call a 'ghost town', it being a gigantic estate of mausoleums dedicated to the dead.  So, have a gander at Cairo's ghost town -
     Okay, time to see if the motley can escape a pack of Robot Attack Squirrels!

Here a brief aside.  The original post of "The Big Queasy" suffered a formatting failure this morning when I re-opened it, so I had to copy the whole thing and paste it here, into a new Queasy.  So - you are reading a clone ...     

150 Years Of The Periodic Table
This was a couple of days ago, though here at BOOJUM! we laugh at clocks, and calendars, and other such time-corseting nonsense, so you'd better just suck it up and pay attention.
     The Periodic Table! 

The rascal in question

     Invented by a Ruffian (Mendelev the man) who was canny enough to not only organise what you we humans knew about the elements at the time (1906 I think) but to leave gaps that would allow the inclusion of other, as yet undiscovered elements.  Damn yer eyes, them Rooskies can be clever at times!

Dmitri, being all Mendelevy
(Surname probably a derivation from "Almond")

     That's why you have to keep a wary eye on them, just to make sure they haven't gone and invented the Dalek by accident.
     Anyway, back to the periodic table.  Conrad can recite quite a few of them there elements without resorting to a key -
     Hydrogen, Helium, Lithium, Beryllium, Boron, Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Fluorine, Neon, Sodium, Magnesium, Aluminium, Silicon, Phosphorus, Sulphur, Chlorine, Argon, Potassium, Calcium, Scandium, Titanium, Vanadium, Chromium, Manganese, Iron, Cobalt, Nickel, Copper, Zinc, Gallium, Germanium, Astatine, Selenium, Bromine, Krypton, Rubidium, Strontium, Yrconium, Zirconium, Niobium, Molybdenum, Technetium, Ruthenium, Rhenium, Palladium, Silver, Cadmium, Indium, Tin, Antimony, Tellurium, Iodine and Xenon.
  Those in red I looked up, but it's not bad going.  I stopped there because otherwise you'd all be accusing me of padding the word count.*

Ferocious Fluorine!

     Conrad, as ever manifesting the spirit of a small, malicious, destructive child, would like to suggest a new version of Ol' Dmitri's finest work - a three star rating for each element, one star per element for being EXPLOSIVE, POISONOUS and RADIOACTIVE.  That would be cool!

Badgers!
Conrad was unaware that there is a South Canadian - er - "version" of the badger that we in the Allotment of Eden love so much we make shaving brushes from their fur.  I discovered this last night whilst constructing the early part of this screed.  Art?

They're not wrong ...

     Calling that ball of fur, fangs and fury a "Badger" ought to be remedied with a little more punctuation, i.e. "BADger".

 

     Dog Buns!  The formatting problem has followed me e'en here, the swining software.  Everything is dodging and dancing across the page.

     Apparently the South Canadian badger does NOT make a good pet, being that they are known for their aggression, persistence, aversion to strangers, ability to dig out of penned enclosures, expensive to buy, smelly (related to the skunk, you know) and able to totally kill you.

"I owned a South Canadian badger"

"I, too, own badgers.  But the cuddly European variety"

Dog Buns!  (Yes, again.  I apologise for the untrammelled wickedness of this bad language, which also incidentally ups the word count as a side-effect).  I'm typing this at work on my lunch, and - perhaps that senility isn't as far away as I hoped - have forgotten to eat any of it.

Finally -
Oh my days!  (as the young folks here at work say).  Last night I came across a couple of continuity errors in "Kelly's Heroes", which delighted my shrivelled little soul.  During their set up for the attack on the Teuton garrison of Claremont, Crapgame and Willard are humping a .30 calibre Browning - with no ammunition belts or boxes.

The pair in question

     Suddenly!  When they come to open fire, there's an ammunition belt there.  On the other hand, when Petuko opens fire with his magazine-fed BAR, he's swathed in un-necessary ammo belts.

Evidence!

*  Which might be true.  Or not.