Seven Minutes To Midnight

I'm Showing My Age Here
Since the title above refers not only to how close to 00:00 I am posting, but also to the Wah! single of the same name, which your humble scribe purchased Lo! these many decades ago.  As I recall, Pete Wylie said that the title referred to the Four Minute Warning (a cue that Armageddon had been unleashed) and the three minutes it would take you to play said single.

Oh my youthful days

     Which has nothing at all to do with the rest of this Intro.  Actually, looking at a cold white expanse of nothing, I cannot remember what I was going to witter on about, having started last night and now picking up the tangled skein of my thoughts this clammy February morning.
     So!  Let us now return to the BTR 60 and the vagaries of Sinister Union military design - Art?

Know your enemy

     Now, the thing is, the Sinisters were perfectly capable of taking an ingenious design and making a total muck of it.  Nor did they ever create a pigeon-powered guided bomb, either, did they?  Here we have the 10 ton Bronetransporter, in need of an engine.  You would think this is a simple thing to arrange, wouldn't you?
     Wrong.
     There was no suitable engine already in existence, so rather than invent one, the Sinister GAZ design bureau cobbled together two smaller ones.  These two separate engines required two separate clutches and two separate gearboxes and drove alternate sets of axles, and, sad to say, they were not entirely reliable.  If one broke down the other lacked the power to shift what Sinister troops called, with their trademark grim humour, the "Mobile Coffin" - on account of it's shape, one hopes.

The Gorkivsky Zavod beast in question

     Here an aside.  The South Canadians have what they call an "Opfor", as they love their portmanteau words: it stands for "Opposition Force" and refers to troops who pretend to be the bad guys on exercises, driving the bad guy's vehicles or their own kit made up to look bad.  Since the Israelis had captured oodles of Sinister kit in their various wars, they gracefully allowed their South Canadian chums to have some, including BTR 60s.

Like this

     These things required a lot of love and attention in order to stay in running order, and I recall the officer in charge of Opfor being distraught, because the only mechanic able to baby their BTR 60s along was leaving.       The BTR 60 - designed by Heath Robinson and manufactured by Professor Branestawm!

The prof in question

     Now to see if the motley is able to escape the Sentient Flying Fork of Batavia!*

More A Man Of Mud
Last week you were introduced to the dybbuk, a sinister entity from Jewish folklore.  There is a more saintly equivalent, the name of which escapes me, but we're not going to talk about that.  For instead we shall be looking at the Golem.  Art?

Natty dreads, man.

     This was a homunculus constructed out of mud (or clay, they say, which is merely another kind of mud in my opinion), usually by some learned (or lazy) Jew.  It is brought to life by attaching the word "Emet" (Hebrew for "Truth") to it in some fashion, either inscribed on it or via a card or paper.  I said "lazy" because one chap created a female golem to do his household chores; a win-win for him as golems cannot speak, and have no trade union nor minimum wage.

"Go do the dishes!"

     If they did ever get together to protest, then the clever chap only had to erase one character to create the word "Met" ("Death" in Hebrew), and Hay Pesto! one lifeless pile of mud later, no more labour problems.      There is also an extremely silly Sixties film that stars a golem, but I can't remember the title, and it doesn't seem to feature "Golm" anywhere.  If I could remember the lead actor that might help <curses failing memory and old age>.

Oh, it was a fork!

     Hmmm, it appears that the lead character was not Michael Gough.**

I Have This Idea -
Triggered by seeing an advert for the television detective series "Luther", with the tagline appended "This will hurt".  Art?
                                                   Art covering all bases, eh?      Luther, it would appear, is one of those gloomy misanthropes who live a life of abject misery in the pursuit of their occupation, which in his case is catching murderers.  Fair enough.
      Conrad's idea was quite radical:  how about a television series featuring a Happy Detective?  He's happily married with an attractive wife whom is not having an affair with anyone; has two well-behaved kids who are doing excellently in school; gets on well with all his colleagues; enjoys his job and does not take it home with him at night.  Plus they always catch the bad guys.  This is easier than you might imagine, since evil criminal masterminds are very thin on the ground in real life, or what passes for it.
     What do you think?  A bit tooooo radical?

"Hello?  Is that the Casting Director?  You're fired."

"Cornucopia"
Because your humble scribe's mind never stops working, that Codeword entry "Cornu" stuck in my memory, and because I have read an awful lot, the word "Cornucopia" also vied for attention.  Did the one have anything to do with the other?

The cornu - remember my ranting ill-tempered screed about same?

     Most certainly they did!  From classical culture and mythology, a "Cornucopia" was a veritable harvest of food and fruits, carried in a horn - which is where the "Cornu" bit comes in.  Art?

A.K.A. The Horn Of Plenty

     Quite why you would fill what is, frankly, a rather clumsy vessel without convenient handholds, and which is likely to swallow all the grapes, is lost on me.  The past is another country, as they say, and one with poor fruit-handling skills to boot.
And with that - we are done.  Tally ho!
*  Or was it a spoon?
**  This will annoy me all day long.  Bah!