Conrad: Apprentice World Dictator

You Have To Start Small With These Things
After all, it's not like they have an online Masterclass in "World Domination" that you can sign up to - or, as our South Canadian cousins would say, "Masterclass in World Domination #101", which I believe is a generic reference to an education session at an institute of higher education.
     I have, in the past, made note of those persons who will be the first to make involuntary contributions to the Organ Banks.

Probably not to the Brain Depository, though

     Plus, there will be no more musicals.  Ketchup will be banned, as will the pineapple and parsnip, and it will become illegal to put mayonnaise on chips.  Using cloning technology, we will create a whole batch of Thomas Pynchons, who will be chained to word processors in order to fulfil their duty.
     Of course, a Resistance movement would inevitably arise, except I shall have already established it myself under false pretences, and after a few months, guess what?  The Resistance will mysteriously vanish, and the number of slaves in my uranium mines will increase by a corresponding number.

A sight to warm the cockles of a World Dictator's heart
(assuming they have one)

     You may well wonder what has triggered this particular admission of devilry and overweening ambition - 
     Here an aside.  Have you ever wondered where that word "Overweening" comes from?  You only ever see it used about the excessively proud or ambitious - we shall come back to that - and it doesn't really feature in everyday conversation.*  Okay, the derivation is from "Over" and "Ween", the second part of which comes from Old English "Wenan", meaning "To think".  Overthinking.  We shall come back to that, too.

The odious Pecksniff, brought low by <drum roll> overweening greed and ambition

     Where were we?  O yes - my egomaniacal ranting.  Brought about by my gaming to completion a "Square Bashing" scenario, which I began to bore you with yesterday.  SB deals with very large formations of the First Unpleasantness, and in my case, we are talking of an Army Corps versus two regiments.  Art?

View from the Teuton board end

      Here you can see the initial Teuton outlay.  Unlike the SB method, I don't dice to see where fortifications end up.  There is a Teuton outpost line of barbed wire and trenches, then a continuous line of barbed wire and trenches, and pillbox sites.  Those bases off the board on white card represent the pillbox garrisons.  There's also a road in rear, with a reserve battalion next to a truck.  This is the emergency reserve, who can jump in the truck and move rapidly to either side of the board should a breakthrough threaten. Overall these forces amount to a regiment,  or about 5,000 men.  Art?

View from British board end

     This represents an Army Corps, or two divisions with additional units, amounting to, ooh, about 40,000 men.  The three port squares and extras off-board are the 51st Highland Division, those to starboard are the 39th Division.  Again, contra-SB, I have units off-table, as there simply isn't room to deploy them on the board.

Get lost, you idiot!

     One thing about SB is that it forces you to think like a general, rather than a lieutenant.  It is immensely unwise to simply spread everything you've got all across your front line and go hell-for-leather at the Hun; if you have nothing in reserve, what happens if you want to reinforce success?
     For this reason, the 39th Division is concentrating two brigades on the divisional port flank, one to assault and another in reserve behind it.  The starboard flank is held with only one brigade, spread across two squares, as the intent there is only to mask the Teuton defences, not attack them.
     The 51st has two brigades spread across all three of it's starting squares, with the reserve brigade held behind the middle square.  The reason for these brigades being in such reserve positions is so that, if they advance far enough, they do not hit the Teuton pillbox complexes - attacking these head-on would be unwise and costly.

The very model of a modern major-general.**

     I think you'll admit, in real life that braying oaf Melchett would have been Stellenbosched rather quickly.
     Wow.  The Intro has taken up most of this post.  Quick!  Hurl the motley into that water-butt full of Stargazer fish and let us proceed!

A Whale Of A Time
As you may have recently become aware, plastic has suddenly morphed into the Epitome Of Evil.  This will put a bit of a crimp into the novelisation of "Alien", because the "Nostromo" is towing an oil-refinery-in-space not merely for fossil fuels, but in order to create plastics when it reaches Earth.  Perhaps the future doesn't give a stuff about ecology?
     Anyway, the best way to raise awareness of how Bad Plastics Are is by - Art?

Obviously!

      - Creating a dead whale from plastic waste.  Ha!  Take that, Populous Dictatorship!  That'll teach you - next up, a giant Winnie The Pooh made from pop bottles; believe me, that would get some attention.

Also -
You might consider the whale above to be defective - work with me on this one - but how about one that actually defects?  Art?

A Beluga whale

     This particular individual turned up in the wake of a Norwegian ship, begging for food and generally being all pally and friendly.  The harness attached bore Cyrillic script indicating it came from Saint Petersburg, and had apparently held some Sinister Device, which had either been detached or fallen off accidentally, or - cynical me at work - the Norwegians nicked it and then lied about it never being there.  The whale was especially tame and has been trained by the Ruffians to mooch around in harbour, probably carrying a camera, so they can spot anyone trying to sneak around beneath their ships.  What, like that decrepit 36 year-old aircraft carrier of their?  Pshaw!

The Admiral Kuznetzov, wheezing it's way home on a tow rope.

      The thing is, they'll have trained this whale with food, which means, like any fickle animal, it will abandon it's former owners for anyone else who will feed it.

Cheerio!




*  Unless you are talking to Conrad, who can be sure to shoehorn some obscure word into the conversation as proof of his cleverness.
**  You know, that sounds familiar ...