Because if I do, you're all going to be trying to do their sketches, in varying degrees of awfulness.
I shall have something to say about this. Later. |
"Get on with it, you fearful old biffer!" I can hear you jeering. May I point out my complete lack of biffishness? Thank you so much. The 58 years old I admit to.
Anyway, what I intend to talk about is the 23rd Division in the Great War, a division that had just gone through one of the successful attritional slogging-matches of the Third Ypres campaign: the Battle of the Menin Road. Art?
An unlovely place |
After a bit of shifting about, the 23rd ended up on the Asiago Plateau. Art?
British hospital behind the lines |
Grim soldiers of the Br - I say, chaps, you're supposed to be grim! Grim, not laughing! |
Enter the British (and the French). Sitting still and twiddling one's thumbs was not their way, and the Austro-Hungarians must have wondered what hit them. The 23rd immediately sent out officer patrols, reconnaissance patrols and fighting patrols; they sought out enemy outposts, the enemy front line, suspected listening posts, and they attacked them, capturing prisoners for identification and interrogation.
For all that, this bucolic landscape must have been absolute manna to the Tykes and Geordies of the 23rd, after the brown lunar aspects of Flanders.
As the title says, considerably different.
The Asiago in winter |
A Bit Of Random Art Appreciation
I don't know why - the mind is a tricky thing, isn't it? - but the cover art for that seminal heavy-metal album "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath" popped up in my head a few days ago. I can only put the front cover up as a small image, as there are <ahem> naughty bits involved. Art?
That's close enough! |
Here a couple of asides. The art here is by one Drew Struzan, at the time a workaday graphic artist who got paid all of $250 for his efforts. He won fame in later years for his work on Star Wars poster art, and - Art?
An example |
You can have this one as large as you like |
It's an interesting album, with a lot of stories attached, which we may come back to, and it's a lot more than the Obvious Metal Hammer you might have expected from the Sabs. Also, it conspicuously lacks fluffy bunnies and rainbows, and has Rick Wakeman playing on one track.
Dog Buns! There was a link at the end of the page that had the SBS album cover story on, which I left up because it had a couple of bands with awesomely objectionable names, except I deleted the link, and on following it back, those bands have disappeared. There was religion and siege warfare involved, I remember that much. O well. I may chase it up tomorrow.
Rick. A man suffering from piano-envy. |
Finally -
Conrad is ever one for mucking about with words, as you may have realised by now. If you have been faithfully following BOOJUM! for Lo! these many years wondering when the in-depth critical analyses of Lewis Carroll are going to arrive - then I feel sorry for you.
Anyway, not to blow my trumpet or anything, but Your Humble Scribe was handed a collection of Mensa Calendar notes, which have a puzzle on each page that range in difficulty from one star - * - to five stars - *****. Art?
Five stars? I got the first three straight away and a couple of minutes to get "WHITISH", so either this isn't as hard as it's claimed to be or -
NO NO IT'S INCREDIBLY DIFFICULT HONEST!
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