Suprise! A Bunch Of Lies

No!  That Does Not Automatically Refer To Me
That just shows how little regard you have for Conrad, who would go away and weep in a corner, if he had tear ducts or feelings.
     No, I refer to a clutch of folks not being honest, none of whom are me, as I always tell the truth.*
     Firstly, I must mention that fabled area of Legend, Area 51.  More formally, it is part of Nellis Air Force Base, nestling in the wilds of Nevada.  To say it is Top Secret is to allude to lava being quite toasty; it has been the site for the development of extremely advanced, ultra secret aircraft for decades, stuff like the Blackbird reconnaissance aircraft.  Art?

The SR71 Blackbird

     This thing will boot along at over Mach 3 (or over 2,000 m.p.h. in human terms), which means it has very poor fuel mileage, as well as being practically invulnerable to interception: the Sinister's Protivo Voennoi Oborenniy Strany ("Air Defence of the Homeland") probably wept and shook their fists at it, as being the best they could manage.  A somewhat CGI'd version of an SR71 appears in "The Phantom Menace" or a film like that.  These manned missiles were kept very, very secret indeed.
     Then, too, there were the Sinister aircraft that the South Canadians <ahem> acquired by one means or another.  These would be trialled, tested, put up against South Canadian fighters in mock combats, taken apart, put back together and variously analysed to the nth degree.  Art?

Sinister Mig 21 in South Canadian colours

     All done in utter secrecy at Area 51 <sue sinister oboe music>.
     Now, this is where the lies begin.  Very little is publicly acknowledged about Nellis, which means that peddlers of piddle can make fatuous farcical claims without fear of the US Government stepping in to deny or criticise them.  Enter fabulist Bob Lazar, who spun bizarre tales about how he was a physicist who worked on UFOs at Area 51, reverse-engineering them.  The UFO geeks swallowed it all up credulously; more cynical and enquiring folks found out he was lying about everything except his name.  This was in 1989, and after a short time in the spotlight making a quick buck, he quietly disappeared, running a chemical-supply business.  

Fob laser.  Close enough.

     He has crawled out from under his stone now, though, because Netflix have a documentary about him on the go.  Gosh, one might almost think he was trying to coin a quick buck!
     So, to the credulous and the witless, the fact that there were aliens at Area 51 was undeniably established, carven in stone, as true as stating that the sun will rise tomorrow - and other cliches indicating a fragile grasp of reality.
     The USG  maintained and maintains a sombre, serious silence about the place.
     You'd better believe we're coming back to this topic!

CAUTION!  Being dead can spoil your vacation

     So, let us move from one set of lies to another, which regretfully does go on, rather, about TANK.

Teutonic Tanky Truthfulness
That sterling chap Peter Samsonov, he who regularly posts all sorts of historical archive stuff about tanks in his blog, "Tank Archives" - hey, neither he nor I claim uniqueness or inspiration for the title! - has discovered egregious lying carried out by the Teutons on the Eastern Front when it comes to inflicting and suffering damage to tanks, which is a metric usually trotted out by both wehraboos** and krasnaboos*** in support of their (partisan) claims.

                             "Ooops"                                                        "Vanya, this explains why our taxi was so cheap!"
     Here's a link to one of his typically detailed investigations, helped not a little by his fluency in Russian.

http://tankarchives.blogspot.com/2018/11/cheating-at-statistics-su-strike-at.html#more

     The Teutons claim to have knocked out 32 Sinister Self-Propelled Guns, which to a layman look pretty much like tanks, for the cost of 3 of their own.  Then they suddenly withdraw, despite their stunning local victory.
     In fact this is fiction akin to that of Bob Lazar; as Ol' Pete shows, the Sinisters didn't lose any such vehicles that day.  The Teuton report mentions a minefield, and it seems far more likely that the Teuton tanks ran into said minefield and were destroyed by anti-tank guns and artillery once they'd had their tracks blown off and been immobilised.  Of course they can't actually bring themselves to admit this, so they say they lost 3 tanks.  If there is any further mention of the Teuton tanks, it's usually to say that they were all subsequently lost for "technical reasons".  What this means is that they were all lost in the first place, except Irwin couldn't bear or didn't dare to tell the truth, because - Ubermensch!

ISU 152 Self Propelled Gun, with puny humans for scale

     Well, this has been thin fare for anyone not interested in TANK or conspiranoid loonwaffling, so let us make a leap of the imagination and fly in our Spaceship-of-the-Mind (which I stole from Carl Sagan) all the way to -

     - Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell!

Manchester Comic-Con 2019
Your Humble Scribe will not be attending because he is a charmless nurk with no social skills and horrid body odour and his face scares small children  THANK YOU MISTER HAND!  As I was saying, because I've been once and that was enough.  The vendors may be interesting, or not; that's a bit of a gamble.  The comics selection isn't as good as either Forbidden Planet or Travelling Man, it's heaving busy, and if you don't get in early with a Premium ticket, you'll miss the Special Guests.

Like this one

     They don't seem to have anyone special this year, or at least nobody I've heard of - trotting out some obscure "Voice Actor and claiming that they are internationally feted is - well, it's being a bit Bob Lazar, isn't it?
     The one thing that is always entertaining and exceptional are the fans who dress up in costume, and you can see them for free just by standing on the pavement outside.  Art?
      
       

       This sort of thing.  Bless them.  The one time of year they get celebrated not mocked (though there might be some bitchiness about people with Exactly The Same Costume).

Finally -
"Porridge As Building Material" jested Lee, after a little anecdote or two about how the stuff bonds to the surface of crockery and cutlery as if made with superglue, if you don't soak things immediately afterwards. 
     Well, you know Conrad, an alien a man with a sense of curiosity that is never still nor sated ...

Makes concrete obsolete!

*  This is a lie <the horrid truth once again courtesy Mister Hand!>
**  "The Wehrmacht was the greatest!  That's why they won!"
***  "The Red Army was the greatest!  That's why they never lost!"