Being A Bit Of A Bugger

No!  Not The Vulgar Insult
     Here an aside.  Yes, already!  Once again, whose blog is it?  About that vulgarism: it has a very interesting etymology, going back to the 10th century and the early Bulgarian kingdom.  The Christian religion there evolved into the Eastern Orthodox Church, which did not sit well with the Catholic Church, because the Catholic Church was the big daddy of Christian religions, and in those days they took religion VERY VERY SERIOUSLY.  Seriously enough to waive the First Commandment when it came to these Orthodox types.  Thus the Bulgarians - known as Bulgars in those days - were considered to be, and condemned as, heretics, who got up to all sorts of <ahem> Un-natural Practices; sodomy, using zips not buttons and passing the slivovitz to the left, that sort of thing.

Slivovitz:  also good at stripping paint and running petrol engines

     The name for these terrible people evolved over time, from the Latin "Bulgarus" to the French "Bougre", and then to the word heard so often in English, which you'll just have to imagine.  I have only met one Bulgarian, Stan, who was a personable chap who baked a very nice cake.
     You'll have to excuse my typing, which is very slow at present, thanks to the presence of Edna on my lap.  I have had to put the laptop off to one side and contort myself across 90 degrees to reach the keyboard.  Art?

The arrangement

      Edna has taken pole position, supplanting the hated laptop, and we have a better photograph of her sprawled on her Human-Shaped Cushion.  Art?

     She's a little tired thanks to the second dog-walk of the day.  Here's one of the first:

     That shadow is deceptive.  You can see from the  ground that it had been raining earlier that morning, and we were only tempted out by the sun putting in a reluctant appearance.  Feeling unloved, or unwanted, or that it's awesome fusion powers were under-appreciated, it soon vanished and the rains returned.
     On our second walk a cat crossed our path about 10 yards ahead, and you could tell Edna had spotted it, since her head went up and she immediately accelerated.  Said cat had enough sense to get into a nearby garden and since Conrad doesn't let her off the lead on Tandle Hill Road, there was no bloodshed.
     Okay, motley, this 1,500 piece jigsaw when completed will give you the alpha-numeric code to use on the keypad and get out of your cell.  Which has enough air for about five hours.  Good luck now!

You'll need it

     
Back To Today's Title
I meant it in the sense of bugs, or germs, although explaining how I get there from here is a bit fraught.
     Okay, I am now about 2/3s of the way through "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies", which will hereafter be abbreviated to PAPAZ since I am lazy and don't  care about the word count.*  At one point in the narrative Lady Catherine declares her intent about  researching a cure for the zombie plague, which our narrator rather scorns, since the finest scientific minds have unsuccessfully pursued just such an objective - for 55 years.

             
                                  Jane Austen                                         Boston just because it rhymes)
      This is an interesting point, since the progenitor, PAP, was published in 1813.  So in the PAPAZ timeline the zombie plague has been raging in Perfidious Albion since 1758?  Hmmm.  And in all that time nobody has come up with a cure?
     This is not too surprising, since the field of bacteriology did not develop until the mid-nineteenth century, a good forty years after PAP was published.  Since the pathogen that caused the zombie plague is never identified, nor it's introduction to Perfidious Albion explained, we don't know that it's a bacterium.

Could be a virus

     If it's a virus then the Bennetts and Darcys and Lucas's are all in big trouble, since virology did not become a scientific thing until the very end of the nineteenth century.  Thus it will be at least forty years, at the very earliest, until anyone comes up with a cure.
     Of course, I could be overthinking this ...

"Justified"
For those unaware - like Your Humble Scribe at the beginning of the week - this was a television series featuring the splendidly named Timothy Oliphant (which surname is apparently derived from the Norman for  "Olive" as in the olive branch, which is ironically and hilariously inappropriate and you'll see why).
     Mr. Oliphant plays the part of Raylen Givens, complete with cowboy hat and boots, and he's really, really good at shooting people.

Watch where that right hand is ...

     Fortunately for him, he's also a US Marshall, so he can get away with it.  Mostly.  He puts lots of holes in a bad guy at the series outset, which has him being sent back to his hometown of Harlan, where he still has lots of opportunities to shoot foolish people who think the cowboy hat and boots are merely for effect.
     The source material for the series, which ran for 78 episodes, is an Elmore Leonard short story, "Fire In The Hole".  That's some short story.  6 seasons from one tale?
     You can see the EL influence in the plots (he was an Executive Producer, so that may be why) and characters.  The villains are not mere ciphers, plans go wrong, people have histories, things get complicated, there is a darkly comic undertone to much of the goings-on.

Raylan plays nice -

 - then shoots someone.

     Your Humble Scribe has another 74 episodes to go. I'll let you know.

Finally -
A short closer.  Let me introduce you to another strange aircraft, this one being the Blohm & Voss BV 141.

Er - yes.  Or no.

     Yes, it is complete.  This beast was designed as a reconnaissance aircraft, with the fuselage separated from the power plant, presumably in order to give better all-round visibility, which is something important in a recon aircraft.  However, the view to port is blocked to a considerable degree by the engine, so - what was the point, again?
     The Teutons of the Second Unpleasantness were always doing this - short production runs of specialised equipments taking up time and resources and manpower and money, to very little utility <purses lips disapprovingly>


*  This is a lie <the horrid truth courtesy Mister Hand>