A Constructive Day

Today Was My Day Off
Since I am working on Saturday; however, you aren't getting a double post today, for two reasons.  

Baku, 1904.  Just to see if this comes up as the default Facebook picture.

One, the traffic figures for today have already gone barmy, with over a hundred hits, which Art can illustrate if he'll put down his plate of coal -

     I wish I knew what had proven to be so enticing, and there are probably analytical tools that you can use to determine same, to better target your audience and maximise you profit margins and other business-speak.  Since our business here is the propagation and promulgation of nonsense for it's own sake, that doesn't really appeal.
     Reason The Second is that I have been quite busy this afternoon, having baked a Spicy Fig and Date Loaf, a batch of ginger biscuits and currently have a gluten-free Chocolate Brownie mix on the go in the oven.  I know, I know, "photos or it never happened" is about the best I can expect from you lot.  Perhaps tomorrow, since Conrad already has a pun planned for the event.

No, Art, I said - O never mind
(charges up Tazer>

     In addition I've started my collection of Lord Peter Wimsey short stories, which are about as far away from my recent hard-boiled reading (James Crumley and Joe Lansdale) as it is possible to be, unless you get to the I.S.S.  Plus add in the successful completion of a Cryptic and a Codeword, and beginning a divisional history, and finishing my annotation of "Defiance", plus walking the dog whilst it wasn't raining. I have also been listening to the "We Have Ways" podcast, so I've been quite occupied.  Still to come: the Pub Quiz, making lunch for tomorrow and getting some scoff this evening.  Oh, and a shower.   Can't go to the Pub Quiz looking like I slept in a septic sump*.

Bed!

     There will now be a short pause as I go check on them Chocolate Brownies.
     
     Okay, motley, time to mow the lawns!
     Don't weep, the anti-personnel mines have been de-activated, and we won't go near the barbed wire, okay?

Conrad Finally Reads A "Proper Book"
Well, "Proper" as defined by people like English Lit. teachers and lecturers, or posey pseuds.  Art?

Erk alors.

      The reason I have this particular tome is because I'd already read (and not especially enjoyed) "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies", which thought itself a lot cleverer than it was.  Your Humble Scribe then realised he couldn't judge PAPAZ properly as he'd never read the original.  When I ended up at Morten's bookshop in Didsbury, that seemed an appropriate time to select some of Ol' Jays finest, including the volume above and "Mansfield Park", which I studied for "A" Levels many a long year ago.
     I shall be reading it on the bus journey into and from work, when I am a captive audience.
     Wish me luck!

"Fiacre"
Another one of Those Words That Pop Up In My Mind.  This one whilst I was stood at the worktop, pondering what to bake.
     Now, unlike most of these words, I knew what this one was straight away: a horse-drawn vehicle.  One quick referral to my Collins Concise and this is confirmed to be true: "A light four-wheeled carriage".  Art?

Thus

     So called because they were first used for hire outside the Hotel De St. Fiacre in Paris, in the seventeenth century.  There you are, now we both know more than we did five minutes ago.
     BOOJUM! - educating the world one factoid at a time.

     Excuse me, Edna is barking.  This is either Degsy arriving or the FSB are back to try again.  Really, after the last time they ought to know better!  I shall go and check ...

     Good job I went, the Chocolate Brownies were ready.

"We Have Ways Of Making You Talk" - A Podcast
That one featuring Al Murray and James Holland, who broadcast weekly, and who feature an Artefact of the Second Unpleasantness as well as a forgotten person or event, and whom attempt to answer stuff people put up on Twitter.  Most of these questions seem to be about war films, good or bad.  Ol' Jim has a wealth of material he can draw upon and bring to the cast, as he's written scads of books on historical stuff, whereas Al is the enthusiastic amateur, who nevertheless knows his stuff.

The two rascals together with a tank

     I could probably do a whole post with nothing but content that these two have either mentioned or inspired, which would be 1) Easy and 2) Cheating, so I shall merely confine my recounting of their approach to An Artefect.  Art?

I don't think they had an ammo belt for it

     This is the Teuton MG 42, which the Wehraboos** collectively wet themselves over.  "Rate of fire, rate of fire," they babble, glassy-eyed and sweaty-palmed.  "Rate of fire!"
 To them, this weapon's extremely high rate of fire makes it worthy of - well, sacrificing their first-born to it.  Ol' Jim having actually had the chance to fire one of these, was considerably more sanguine.
     Oh, I should point out that Al is the proud possessor of this particular Artefact, and they were looking at it sat upon his kitchen worktop.

Al posted this shot of his gun

     Ol' Jim pointed out if you fire it at the maximum rate, it generates so much smoke you can't see anything, and the barrel rapidly gets so hot it will cause spontaneous fires in any nearby flammable materials.  The bipod is particularly shoddy and wobbles all over the place.  In fact, he states that users were forbidden to fire more than 250 rounds per minute, which, given that this thing chucks lead at 20 rounds per second, means all of 12 seconds.  What you do in the other 48 seconds is up to you -

Enough of martial military mayhem!  Let us instead focus on - on <thinks> 

Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers!
There is a sound reason why I selected these whangdoodles, which we'd go into in some detail, were it not for the fact that we're already well over the Compositional Ton, I need to get some tea, and I haven't yet made tomorrow's lunch.  
     Anyway, Art?

That missing letter "G" irks me.  IRKS, I SAY!

*  That's Art's job.
**  Persons of a mindset thus: "The Germans were the best and everything they had and did was utterly awesome which is why they won the war -"