I'm Board -

And If You Point A Finger - 

 - it will be broken off at the knuckle.  What the heck Jane Kaczmarek, don't you idle termagants recognise a pun when you see one?  Regardez-vous -                                    

The board in question

     Here we see a naked bit of fibreboard.  Hardly news, is it?  One doubts the headline "Conrad has a bit of board in his Sekrit Layr" will ever see the Beeb's webpages.  However, it matters to Your Humble Scribe because it means the tyranny of JIGSAW is broken!
      Here an aside.  Work colleague Jason heard of me doing a jigsaw - because I told him, gentle reader, not because it was a hot topic across the office floor - and, he being an immensely practical man, assumed I was creating one by use of a jig saw.  Ha!  As if - Your Humble Scribe being an immensely unpractical man who can't even slice the bread straight.  Perhaps I should have qualified my statements with "Jigsaw Puzzle".

     So last night, for the first time in weeks, it was back to Square Bashing -
           

     where the Teuton player (i.e. me) just managed to get an Eingrieff battalion and machine-gun company into the A1 square before the British player (also me) got in there.  Bad staff work there, old chap, don't you know?
<brief pause to go brew a cup of chai and brown a slice or two of wholemeal>

 

     Okay, that's my creative skills at work.  Well over two hundred words about a bit of fibreboard, in a riveting and insightful article.  Let us only pause to bungee the motley to this helicopter skid mere seconds before it ascends to the heavens, and we're off!

An Expert Reviews ...
This is a Youtube channel which does exactly what it says on the tin: an expert in a particular specialist field reviews films that deal wholly or mostly with said topic - you know, on subject matter like boxing or psychiatry.
     Last night the expert came from an aquarium in New York, and she was an expert in The Mighty And Noble SHARK!
                 
                                                                         One of these two.
     There was a brief clip of a "Sharknado", where the sharks seemed to be invading Outer Space, and that was that.  She couldn't put up with any of them, in any amount.* 

What on Earth?
(Or even off it)

She did rather take "Jaws" to task for it's unrealistically large shark, because most Carcharidon Carcharis clock in at 16 to 20 feet, not 30.  Bad Steven!  Naughty Steven!  No biscuit for you!
     She did like "47 Metres", because this was a thriller where the sharks were an incidental menace, rather than being the villain de jour.
     She did NOT like "The Shallows", where a surfer girl is stranded on a rock 200 yards from shore, being endlessly circled by a Great White with a hungry cast to it's face.  As She The Expert pointed out, the shark's not psychic and it can't see someone lying flat on a rock above the surface of the water.

INVISIBLE TO SHARKS!

     Not only that, a hungry shark isn't about to spend it's day circling a rock in hopes of a human dinner when the ocean is already full of fish.  No sir.  It will rapidly lose interest and head for the briny deeps and Fish On The Menu.

I Shall Now Beat You With A Staff
STAFFORDSHIRE REGIMENTAL MUSEUM that is.  For Lo!  are there yet loads of photographs to come?  There certainly are, and here's the first one.  Art?



     At port you can see a whole lot of pig-sticking implements designed and intended to allow your opponent's insides outside.  The British sword bayonet comes to about 18' long and you can use it as a small sword.**  Centre stage is "The Belgian Rattlesnake" as the Teutons who first encountered it were wont to wail; invented by the South Canadian Mister Lewis, whose own army were not a bit interested.  Just barely visible in the upper starboard is a Brodie-pattern helmet, with quite a compelling hole in it; a small entry hole and a much larger exit one, presumably as the bullet was tumbling.  One can only hope the wearer survived with nothing more than a headache and a requirement for fresh underwear.

     Here you can see a Teuton rifle grenade, which the soldiers of Perfidious Albion hated, at least until they got oodles of their own.  And that is the Teuton "Egg Bomb".  Your Humble Scribe used to think they were so named because of their shape; in fact it's because of their size, as they are indeed no bigger than an egg.  You might as well throw rocks!

 

 

     Last one for today, promise.  More medals, and - actually this looks to be from the Second Unpleasantness, not the first.  Oddly enough, they have a SMLE with a 20-round magazine.  I know, how bizarre!***

     Okay, I am off to get a cup of water and to heat up my pitta bread, it being lunchtime.  Enough of SRM for today (and I can hear your sigh of relief from here).

Behold The Bog Slogger!
No, this is nothing to do with the Anglo-Saxon vulgarism for a water-closet, or what the indelicate call a "Lavatory".  Take a look at this bit of kit - Art?

Quiver in fear!

     It does look like a torture machine gone to seed, doesn't it?  Fear not, for it is but a peat-cutting piece of plant equipment, which once roamed the great peat bogs of Ireland, cutting - you're probably waaaay ahead of me here - peat.  A curious and highly-specialised industry, it would seem.  Art?

Hmmm.  Not sure what to say about this.

     Peat and potatoes, you can't get more Irish than that, unless you used the peat to cook the potatoes whilst drinking a pint of Guinness (insert hackneyed Gaelic expression here).

Finally -
Because we need only a short article to get up to the ton, allow me to introduce another in our occasional series of weird-looking ships.  Art?

Hmmm.

     Here the bridge is built into the prow, rather than sitting back where the funnel is.  This actually makes sense, because here the view is not obstructed nor distanced by half the ship's hull getting in the way.
     It is still undeniably odd, though.


*  Coward!
**  Or the world's most dangerous letter-opener.
***   You were thinking that, right?