Something's Gone Badly Right -

If That's A Thing
Forsooth, the blog is popular today.  Apparently people can't get enough of seething drivel and middle-aged men yarking on about how unfair Codeword compilers are, with a light seasoning of military ordnance and a sprinkle of the nightlife in Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell.

Frequently mistaken.

     No, I'm not about to punish Art, that was a pun on our behalf.  See, I can be tolerant as well.
     Now, let's not hang around, there's a lot to get through tonight and there is also the jigsaw to tackle.  It's making slow but steady progress, thank you for asking.  In fact I can give you a short photo-essay on the subject.  Art?

     I'd estimate that there's about 400 pieces in place there, which only leaves another 1,100 to go.  I have progressed further since that last photograph, though I've not taken a photo yet, as you might not be able to keep up with the sheer adrenaline rush that comes with jigsaws.
     I did mention nightlife, didn't I?  Okay, let's add in the last couple of photos from last night's mild diversion on the town.  Art?

     In howling irony, this is a rather blurry photograph of Rose, a charming young chanteuse accompanying herself on acoustic guitar, whose every word came over with crystal clarity.  She's also the housemate of Jason, the birthday boy whose night out it was, which is why we ended up at the Peer Hat.  Art?

     A slightly more focussed shot of the Four Candles, with an accidental inclusion of Jo in shot as well (work colleague, can't say anything bad about the gel, she's a diamond*).
     I did joke last night about being the oldest person in the room at gigs, didn't I?  Not when the Four Candles are playing, I'm not.  The lead singer, just visible in the background, makes Your Humble Scribe look like a male model.  Nor could you understand anything he was singing.  The contrast with Rose was - oooh, about 1000%.
     Also, given that it was a charity gig in memoriam, the "YAY" inflatables above the stage were a tad out of place.

Quite.

     Now, let us drop the motley into a swimming pool full of puffer fish (angry puffer fish) and see what happens!**

Them Clever Ruffians
In case you were unaware, this is BOOJUM!'s hilarious  nickname - or SOBRIQUET if you're a Codeword compiler - for the Russians, going back to that ballfoot thing somewhere a while ago, where their ballfoot fans were, not to beat about the bush, rather badly behaved.
     Which is only very tangentially related to Mechanised Infantry Combat Vehicles, since these were invented by the Sinisters to help them take over Western Europe, and those ballfoot Ruffians wanted to be the premier ballfoot hooligans in the whole of Europe.  A man's got to have a hobby, one supposes ...
     Anyway, let us get back to the BMP1.  Art!

Yer original MICV

 The BMP - not to be confused with Bone Morphogenetic Protein - was quite revolutionary in it's time.  The idea was that the Murderous Martial Meatbags inside it would be carried onto the battlefield, where they could choose to fight from within their armoured steed, or dismount and be disagreeable on foot.  There were gun ports along each side, you see, from which they could poke their AK47s.  Nor was that all: this infantry-carrying tin can had a (relatively) big gun, with a co-axial machine gun, and it had a Sagger anti-tank missile mounted atop the turret.  Nor was that all: the rakish angled nose would tend to deflect incoming fire, and the whole beast was amphibious.

Gear in the rear
(Note critical absence of BOILING VESSEL!)

    The curse of being first in the field of anything, of course, is that you find out the hard way about all the drawbacks and niggles that later arrivals can learn from.  Thus it was with the Boyevaya Maschina Pekhota Adin.
     For one, the 73 m.m. gun was quite low-powered and consequently low-performance.  That anti-tank missile, once launched, had to be tracked by the BMP, which made it a splendidly static target.  To reload the gunner had to open a hatch on the hull and stick his delicate hands, containing said missile, out in the open.
     As you can see from above, the interior was rather cramped.  Art?

Hot stuff

     If you're a beefy Ruffian - and they are all beefy, coming in at 6'6" and 20 stone - this makes things rather cramped.  Nor is there any air-conditioning, so - cramped and sweaty.  And that central divider they sit upon?  Houses the vehicle's fuel.  Cramped, sweaty and dangerous.  Also, those big bulged doors in the photograph above this one?  Full of fuel.  After a while the recommendation was to fill them with sand, not fuel, as sand does not readily catch fire and roast your crew like rotisserie chickens.     Which makes it sound terrible!  Not that it was, because they made 20,000 of them and countless countries globally bought them.  Teething troubles, shall we say.
     I feel there is more here, which we may well come back to.  Art?

"I'm stuck!"

Shazam!
This will give away your age.  Also, I believe, a tad topical.  If you recognise it as the call that Captain Marvel makes before transforming, then you get one hundred brownie points, which you can use to get your Zimmer frame polished and refurbished.

Not sure if the exclamation mark is canonical.

     On the other hand, if you are as hip, trendy and up to the second as is Conrad <reality creaks and groans at this huge abuse of the truth> then you recognise it as the song-recognition app which is a godsend to those of us who like music and hear a song whilst desperately trying to make out the lyrics, so we can Google them later.
     Not needed with Shazam.  An earlier one I did at New Year came out as The Hunna, and their track "Ny to La".  Art?

Ah!  "NY to LA".  That makes more sense.

     Ah, what's a little capitalisation between friends?
Tally ho!

*  And also married, so this doesn't count as flirting.
**  Nothing good.