It's About Time

No!  We Are Not Banging On About "The Incredibles" Again
Though we will be.  O yes indeedy, Ally Sheedy.  I made loads of notes, which salient fact means you are going to get to share them, like it or not.
     Before that, let me take you aside.  No, seriously, you'll thank me when you go off hiking into the hinterlands of South Canada, or British America.  Art?
           
                                   South Canada                                              British America     
Just so we're clear.     Now, in the immensely civilised Allotment of Eden - Art?

A.k.a Perfidious Albion

     - we have the common decency to not permit enormous bloodthirsty carnivores to roam the landscape, unfettered, as they please, in search of things to eat.  Whereas in the two former nations you may come across all manner of hideously hostile wildlife, ranging from poison ivy to herds of mutant rabid zombie buffalo.*
     And bears.
     If, as a human hinterland hiker, you go about your business yodelling lustily, then most bears will wisely seek to avoid your company, especially if it's an Eurovision song tune.  Should you happen to surprise one, perhaps answering a call of nature, then they can react aggressively - how would you like it if someone burst into the bathroom whilst you were <content redacted by Mister Hand for reasons of good taste> hands?

"All I ask is a little privacy!"

 This is where 'Bear Spray' comes in.  BS is a non-lethal aerosol spray that consists of 1% capsecin, which is the stuff that makes chillis hot.  A proper BS spray has a range of about 10 yards, and you would use it on the bear if it is charging or generally behaving as if you took the last chicken dumpling from the Chinese buffet table.                                                                                      

     Freaky stuff indeed.  What's even more amusing is that whilst pepper sprays are illegal in some South Canadian jurisdictions, BS is not.  The mischievous mind begins to plot ...
     Okay, motley, we're going to drop you from height onto a pile of cardboard boxes, just like a real stuntman!
     There you go - I say, we did empty those glass vases and pocket anvils out of them first, didn't we?



Conrad: Temporal Detective
Yesterday I introduced you to a Finnish album of photographs, which seems to be of considerable age, if a little hard to pin down precisely in terms of date published.  This is where today's title comes from, gentle reader.     First, let us establish a mise en scene.  Art?

"The army's major trooping of the flags event, which anniversary is celebrated annually on May 16th, when the White Army entered the capital."

     The Whites they mention were nothing to do with Aryan superiority, but were instead those in opposition to the Reds (the Bolsheviks), and who won, and thus got to swagger triumphantly into Helsinki.
     Now for one of the very few shots of motorised vehicles in this entire album (over 300 photographs).  Art?

"TANKS"

     These are French-built FT-17 tanks, which were sold to the Finns in August 1919.  So, the anniversary parade above cannot be taking place any earlier than May 1920.  This chimes with the single date that I have been able to find, about President Stahlberg and "1919", which is possibly about his inauguration.
     We are narrowing the field, folks, narrowing the field.

You What?
As you should surely know by now, Conrad derives a great deal of pleasure in messing about with words and language, seeing how far he can stretch The Mother Of Languages** to it's elastic limit.
     Other people just seem to use a Random Word Salad Generator.  I adduce evidence as per Art -

     What?  Who - if it is a who - ? What, again?  Is this title merely a huge anagram?  Note that "Roglic" backwards is "Cilgor", which is suspiciously similar to "Kilgore".  And "late crashes split peloton" - oh that just has to be a Cryptic Codeword clue.
     Of course, I may be overthinking this ...


Killer Konniving Krafty Konrad
That is mucking about with alliteration, rather - I refer you to the first line of the article above - and it concerns the latest episode of "Game of Thrones", which means that having mentioned it, I can use a clickbaity photo when promoting BOOJUM! on Facebook. Tee, not to mention, Hee.  Art?
 
       




 

     Okay, those giant arbalests dubbed “Scorpions” mounted on the city walls have two weaknesses: they cannot elevate sufficiently to deal with a dragon coming in at a ninety degree angle to the horizontal, and they cannot depress more than a few degrees, which means they have a whacking great blind spot, easily large enough for a dragon to come sneaking under.  Imagine if that last giant scaly flamethrower had come creeping up to the walls in the dead of night and blasted the battlements into wrack and ruin.  How many of the Golden Company would have been there in the morning, hmmmm?

Close enough

     As for the Iron Fleet, coming at them out of the sun is one approach.  However, an equally sneaky method would be for said dragon to approach from windward at very low level, breathing fire upon the waters and thus creating a giant drifting cloud of fog, which would conceal it’s approach.  Frankly, the Iron Fleet is the most inappropriate name ever, as their ships are made of highly combustible wood, rope and fabrics; and the only reason they got a dragon in the previous episode was because they had the element of surprise.  Take that away and you have a floating bonfire just a-waiting to happen.

"Cersei's cunning plan lacked a certain something.  Like common sense."

     Maister Qyburn isn't a clever as he likes to think, either.  If you want to get rid of a dragon, why, simply strew a few dozen beef carcasses around - all with a sack of potent poison sewn into their interiors, each wrapped around a delicate glass container full of GoT Napalm - Wildfire, is it?  Ha!


Finally -
Ah.  I did wonder quite what "Avoirdupois" meant, although it did appear to be to do with weight.  It seems I have been using it all this time without realising, since it is the system of measurement that uses a pound (or Lb.) which divides into 16 ounces (or Oz.).  We, in this Sceptred Isle, also know it as Imperial measurement, because we are awesome.  As proof of our wonderfulness, the Avoirdupois system has been adopted by South Canada (see above) and thus it will never die.

Weights are boring.  Here's a BOC song instead.

*  Okay, okay, I was egging the pudding a bit there.  Sue me.
**  Patently untrue, this would probably be something proto-Phoenecian or pre-Mohendro-Darian.