Samizdat? What's That?

It's Ruffian, Since You Ask
(I know you weren't going to so I did it on your behalf).  And no, it does not refer to the Slavic equivalent of Will I Am.

Or even Spam I Am

     Nor is it anything to do with the well-meaning but functionally inept Sam Tarley (he's fond of barley!) from some obscure television series.

Sam, realising that the bathroom is occupied, and he's desperate.
(Or, you know - White Walkers)

     In fact this is where idiom can create misunderstanding.  If any Ruffians are reading this (Zdravsvuitye!) then they'd know what it means, rather than the literal translation, which approximates to "Self-publishing house".
     And - idiom again.  We are not talking science-fiction concepts of smart domiciles that secretly submit manuscripts.  No.  Although - <bites tongue, reprimands self and moves on>  A Publishing House.

<sounds of shrieking as Art gets Tazered again>

     To most Westerners, this conjures up pictures of sad, lonely people who desperately want to get their epic fantasy/political thriller/period romance (delete where applicable) published, and who thus turn to a vanity publishing house, who cackle inside whilst taking their money.  Five hundred paperbacks then languish in a basement, never to see the light of day because they are Unspeakably Badly-Written Tosh, which cannot even be given away for free.

The dirty curs!

     Not so in the Sinister era.  Back then, if you were writing a manuscript the regime might not approve of, there would be consequences that usually ended in serious jail time.  Instead of your politically-explosive manuscript going to a publishers, it would get copied and passed around from individual to individual, promoted by word of mouth and staying at all costs out of sight of the authorities.  This happened a lot more often than the Sinisters liked, and it's an indication that not everyone over there in the land of borscht and vodka was or is a fan of dictatorial governments.

"Tsar Putin fondly imagined Conrad's windpipe in his fist."

     Before you cry "fowl!" and point an accusatory Political finger, we are actually referring to the circumstances surrounding the brothers Strugatsky's "The Doomed City".  They were so worried about it's fate - not to mention their own - that they had three copies of the MS, one of which they kept, one which went to a slightly distant friend in Moscow and the last to another slightly distant friend in Saint Petersburg.  Distance and deniability!  They had, after all, flirted with disaster when their novel "The Snail On The Slope" got published, being that half of it satirised Sinister bureaucracy.

Nope.  Not going to translate for you

     Hmmm.  That was rather heavy duty.  Let us now put the motley in a room with this blindfolded grizzly bear in a bad mood, and lock the door from the outside!

Hot Stuff
After the travails of their travels, The Mansion's voyagers returned home and their luggage followed, bearing that below.  Art?

     That's very small chocolate bars there, one of which I nibbled on yesteryon.  Chilli and chocolate, an unusual combination yet one that works.  Of course Your Humble Scribe shrugged off the alleged "Red hot roastiness" because he is not a great big softie.
     That yellow sauce, though - that's a very different matter.  I was careful to use only a couple of drops - counted out of the bottle very slowly - on my meal, as this stuff turned out to be liquid lava in bottled form.  I enjoyed it, since it has taste as well as venom to it's name, but Your Humble Scribe is fairly certain that this sauce would trip Geiger counters were it brought within range.
     Made by modest artisans in Honduras, before you ask.


The squalid inner-city hellhole of Roatan, Honduras - no, hang on -

Conrad Is Angry!  Conrad Is Also (Mildly) Happy!
Yes, it is possible to manifest both states of mind simultaneously - everyone is like that, right?
     I'm  afraid that we are once again referring to the Cryptic Crossword, and their wilfully obcure clues provided in The Metro.  "They're crackers!" (7) exclaimed the clue, which might mean that the answer involved biscuits, or the mentally unstable, or those hand-held devices that use manual pressure and leverage to break open almonds, or those paper things one buys at Christmas.  You get the idea.
     Answer?  None of the above.  It was "BONBONS", which I looked up on Google and Wiki, and <pauses in his rage so as not to hit the keyboard too hard>

Where is the crack?  WHERE, I ASK YOU!

     A bonbon is a variety of sweet, notably without any frangible qualities AT ALL.  Dog Buns, Raffles is more of a bonbon than the above (see picture below for dodgy pun).

Bah!

     The "Mildly Happy" bit comes because, after all, I am generating content for BOOJUM! regardless of the state of my blood pressure. The Cryptic also threw up an answer of "POSTERN" which is a word i'd heard of, in the sense that it was a - gate?  Sally-port?  Elaborate ornate doorway?  Recourse once again to Google.  Art?
 
                                                              A pair of posterns      Typically a postern was a small doorway let into the main part of a fortification, much smaller than the main gateway and thus less likely to be discovered or guarded against.  It could, indeed, be used as a sally port if said main fortification was under siege, to the embarrassment of the besiegers.


The Flying Can Openers
No!  Not a b****y misleading Metro Cryptic Crossword clue.  Late last night I happened to notice a large-format hardback book in one of my (many) bookcases, with the legend "Hurricane" on the spine.
     "Might this have some more information on the Hurricanes launched by rockets from ramps on otherwise defenceless ships?" I asked myself, aloud since there were no bystanders to worry.
     Why yes it did.  Not only that, it also featured a section on the Mark IID Hurricane, which if Art can get off his flabby green posterior -

A whole lot of aerial BANG

     This customer was armed with a pair of Vickers "S" cannon, which were high-velocity guns firing armour-piercing shells.  I think you can see where this is going ...
     These aircraft would be scrambled to take on armoured Axis formations, preferably taking them by surprise and the rear.  Since the aircraft would be attacking from above and at an angle, the AP shells would hit the thinner upper armour of said targets.  Oh, yes, Axis tanks usually had a single pintle-mounted machine gun for shooting back at hostile aircraft, although the evidence for them actually doing this is sketchy; as one Hurricane pilot observed, it took a man of rare courage to man his AA machine gun when facing an aircraft coming at you, doing 245 m.p.h., spitting machine gun bullets and making a frightening BANG BANG BANG BANG with it's cannon.

The only evidence of an AA gun - and a model, not even a real photograph in situ

     The "Flying Can Openers" put in a total of 47 tanks destroyed, alongside 200 other vehicles which is a statistic open to some speculative questioning; they were undoubtedly effective, especially when taking on anything that wasn't a tank, but a closer look at these figures would be interesting.

Someone was having a very bad day -

     Ooops!  We've gone somewhat over the ton, so I think it prudent to cut and run.
     Later, pilgrims!