Is emphatically not the same as a mass murderer. For the title may be many murders spread across many different perpetrators (which is kind of okay), whereas the mass murderer is one particular person responsible for many homicides (who is usually seen as a bit of a villain)*.
Hmmmm. We seem to have got off to a rather grim start today. Still, we are ever wont to grasp the bull firmly by the horns and honk them. Art?
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| No, Art - there's this thing called "Metaphor" you see ... |
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| Graeme |
Perhaps I should have gotten closer. This list not only lists all of Joe Lansdale's "Hap and Leonard" novels in sequence, it gives the date of publication, too, and it's a bit of an eye-opener to see that the first one came out nearly 30 years ago. Yikes.
Not only that, this list is a lot more up to date than those pikers over at Wikipedia could manage, so well done Graeme.
I shall need this photo when buying my next set of H & L books.
Oh, the "Mass of Murders" title? That's because there are scads of murders in these books, which H & L always manage to stumble into. If these two were air-dropped into the middle of the Sahara one night, they'd awake in daylight to find a murdered explorer's body next to them. Then Hap would fall into a puddle.
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| H & L |
The motley's not feeling well today so I've left it in bed with a thermos flask of chicken soup. When, O when, is that injunction going to be lifted?
If Only I Could Bottle This
Here you have that Brown Betty teapot I acquired a few weeks ago, and which I have now relocated to the work's office. As you can see, it came with a knitted tea-cosy that has a bobble, and, without exception, EVERY SINGLE LADY WHO SEES IT COOS "Oh isn't that cute!"
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| Including a taciturn cleaning lady and a gay chap |
"Semaphore"
Another one of those words that cropped up in a Cryptic crossword, that I totally smashed by the way, and which I kind of wondered about. Since it had "-phore" as part of it, Your Humble Scribe thought it probably had Greek roots.
It does. My Collins Concise broke it down into - actually, I beg your pardon, I'd better illustrate what Semaphore is, since all you young snappers of whipper out there think a digital devil-box is the only means of communication possible. Art?
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| Semaphore |
Or, visual communication via flags. This had an obvious utility in the days before telegraph or wireless or radio or devil-boxes, and it still has occasional practical uses nowadays.
Anyway, Greek, as we were saying. "Sema" means "Sign" and "Phore" means "To create or produce", meaning Sign-making. Just think of the mischievous fun to be had amongst people skilled in semaphore, sending and receiving all sorts of things unbeknownst to the thronging multitudes around them.
More Crusading
The Crusader AA tank, that is. I did a piece on this yesterday, about how the Polish use of them in the Falaise Gap seemed to be the only obvious example of their use in a ground role. The only other option I have is to look for an Osprey on the subject, or a specific reference work, for a more detailed look at this variant, which will probably be quite pricey. Art?
| Grrrrr! |
As I mentioned yesterday, their role was very much second-line, in defence of vehicle parks, ammunition dumps, artillery parks, headquarters, all that sort of thing, which meant the chances of even an accidental ground contact were low. It seems the only people who were really keen on them were the Poles.
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| Well, it keeps the rain off. |
From Wiki, which can occasionally be relied upon for the regimental name for the 1st Polish Armoured Division's Crusader unit: "1 pułk artylerii przeciwlotniczej" which is Polish for "Slays many Teutons very quickly".
More Of Polish
We in the Dark Tower have several Polish compatriots amongst us, and Conrad takes a childish delight in saying "Good morning" to them in Polish. "Dzien Dobre", for your information. To which the reply is "Jag dam?", meaning "How are you?, to which the informal reply is "Dobry, dobry". Or, if you are feeling less formal than that, the greeting is pronounced "Shyema!", and the Goodbye is "Narkar" - at least that's how they sound, the spelling I won't answer for.
However ...
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| Yes, however |
Fear of a Hungarian Phrasebook situation a la Monty Python runs deep. What if, instead of indulging in a light and frothy greeting, I am in fact insulting all someone's relatives back to their great-great grandfathers? Or other vile slurs?
Finally -
The BBC website has at last started to come through with some deliciously horrible commentaries on the ballfoot game, which Conrad sits down to read with a bag of popcorn and a pot of tea. I know very little about football, bar what I have read about.
That's just by way of a placeholder. The Beeb can also post some extraordinarily daft sidebars and titles. For example:
"Why are we so scared of clowns?"
Do you need to ask? BECAUSE THEY'RE DOG BUNS CREEPY IS WHY!
They go into a bit of skite about The Uncanny Valley, which is fair enough, but you just put a clown into close proximity with a bunch of people who can't get away and then you'll see some unhappy folks.
Besides, there is this influential classic -
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| The source of a million nightmares |
* Okay, a lot of a villain. There. Morals all satisfied now?
** Of course, I'd have to get invited to parties in the first place.
*** Platonic delight, mind you. No hanky panky here, thank you very much Vulnavia
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