Czech One

Once Again -
If you bafoons can't recognise a pun when it stumbles in front of you, oozing from the orifices and about to exsanguinate, then that's on you.  Tick, or, as we say here, check one of your "FAIL" boxes, gentle reader.
     For what are we discussing here is nothing but Your Humble Scribe's attempts at an Eastern European language.
     Here an aside.  Hey, I did wait a couple of paragraphs!  Back in the days of the Cold War, there were all sorts of low and vapid jokes levelled against the Skoda car manufacturing company from people here in the West.  Art?

Levelled with reason, one would assert.

     Nowadays the Czechs have been let off the literal and metaphorical leash, and Lo! the rude mechanicals they invent today rather leave the Sinister-era ones back in the dust -

Welllll helllllo sexy -

     The Czechs, you see, are what you get if you cross the Teutonic thoroughness of the Germans with the hopeless romanticism of the Russians, bedding down this mixture with a bit of Mountain and River.*
     I say all this as I say "Checie, zeby was wytrzaslo?" which I picked up from the subtitles of "Forbidden Planet" in Polish, which is rendered "Zakazana Planeta".  This phrase means "Wanna bounce through this one?" as rendered in colloquial South Canadian.
    Yes yes yes, there is good no reason for watching it with Polish subtitles, it's just something I do, okay? 
     Anyway, since I sit opposite Konrad, who is 100% genuine Polish, I thought I'd try that phrase out on him.  With the proviso that Your Humble Scribe speaks no Polish.
     "Checie, zeby was wytrzaslo?"  I tried, to Konrad's puzzlement.  He could identify it as a Slavic language, yet it certainly wasn't Polish. 
     Czech, perhaps?
     I boldly showed him the written words, at which he rattled them off with a completely different pronunciation - they were indeed Polish, it was merely my terrible accent that had thrown him.                                                                       Ol' Beddy
      So there you go:  Conrad puzzles Konrad.
     Time to see if the motley is sprightly enough to dodge this tennis-ball serving machine where every fifth ball is made from polished granite!

Looks painful!

     <There will now be a pause as I go toast some bread and brew a cup of char>

Here An Aside
I hadn't planned this, so who knows where we will end up.  Okay, going back to the Czech engineering topic again, cast your mind back to the late Nineteen Thirties, when Herr Schickelgruber managed to bully Europe into letting him have Czechoslovakia.  This was the start of a rather dodgy time for the Czechs, and they didn't really get back on an even keel until 1991, when the Sinisters imploded.
     Here we introduce the subject of TANK again - you can never have too much TANK in your life - and take a look at some choice Czech inter-war engineering.  Art?

          
                            Pz 35(t)                                          Pz 38 (t)
     The Western allies probably regretted allowing Herr Schickelgruber to take over the tank inventory of Czechoslovakia, because they came to 25% of the AFVs attacking France and the Low Countries, after they'd practiced on Poland.
     The Pz 35(t) hung around in the Teuton's inventory for a couple of years before getting sent off to Hungary or Romania.  Good!  it looks like a dumpy old washerwoman.  Whereas the shapely and far comlier Pz 38(t) went on to be the basis of a load of different vehicle hulls.  Art?

This lot

     There you go, your ration of TANK for the day.

Fireball XL-2
No, I have not mis-typed anything.  I know what you're thinking (and I will return that D.A.R.P.A. telepathy helmet soon) and you expected Captain Steve Zodiak and his steed of choice -

Attractive.  But WRONG!

     I refer you to Fireball XL1, which is the name I have given to the Chelyabinsk meteor, because I can.  If you remember, this particular big bang struck about 6 years ago, which is around the time BOOJUM! also struck for the first time.**  Art?
                

     There has been another whacking big meteorite event, and this one, too, is over Ruffia.  Actually the Bering Sea, which isn't technically in Ruffian territory, but you know the Ruffians - always pushing the envelope, and borders too where they can.  Doubtless Tsar Putin will be claiming credit for this Giant Exploding Space Rock, if he thinks it makes him look all hard and alli.  Art?

Squint harder!

     You wouldn't want one of these puppies landing in your backyard, or even in the same county, as this particular one went off with quite a bang - 173 kilotons, actually, or about 11 Hiroshima nukes.  If it hit a city, said city would be gone.  Not that these gatecrashers from the depths of space are common; they are only expected to make planetfall a handful of times each century.
     Further to the above, the old project to track Giant Exploding Space Rocks of 140 yards diameter and below was mothballed, which might get called into question as the wake-up call over that place named after Mister Barents.  After all, a meteor of 140 yards diameter has a mass of - ooh, about two and a half million tons.

A Meteor.  Close enough.

     Enough to put a crimp in your party plans, eh?

     Dammit, only 100 words to hit in order to make the ton, and my lunch time has run out!  More of this anon.

    Oops.  Sneezed so hard that people heard it off in the kitchen, on the other side of the floor.  It happens sometimes, without warning or preamble, and of course all eyes are directed upon Your Humble Scribe.  The consequence of having a large nose combined with a large frame.

Finally -
Whilst still in Comfort Break mode, let us see what kind of strange ship I can conjure up in order to get us over the 1,000 word mark (hilariously known as "The ton" here at BOOJUM!

Oops, indeed.

     Someone has been a naughty boy here, haven't they?  I bet that was expensive to fix.


*  Bedrich Smetana reference for you there.
  **  The two events are not related. DON'T LOOK AT THAT CRATER!