Siren Weasel Suit

Because Nothing Says "Hello!" Like A Weasel

I know what you're thinking*.  "Surely Conrad ought to be banging on about how Sharks are our friends, rather than weasels?"
     You have CLEARLY not been reading BOOJUM! long enough, since Conrad was ploughing his lonely furrow about Our Special Friends long ago, and he was ploughing it about weasels in the first place.  Art?

The splendid weasel

     That above is by Miranda, who as you can see is an art graduate, and to whom Your Humble Scribe mentioned a few months ago that his spirit animal is a weasel <in reality a slug!  the horrid truth courtesy Mister Hand> and bless the girl if she didn't come back last week with the above closely-observed sketch.  It's dead good!
     And why, exactly, are weasels our friends?  Why, because they keep down the vermin who would otherwise infest the crops and houses of you my fellow humans.  You can count on someone from the Royal Society For The Prevention Of Harm To Rats to be right up in your face about this at some point, the pikers.  Anyway, the use of "Weasel" as an insult ought to be banned, so there.
     And while we're at it -


I did mention sirens, didn't I?

     Conrad is unsure exactly why he took this photograph - the mind can be a curious customer at times, you know - but he did and if it's a photograph on my phone then it will get used, so here we are.  Pretty obviously it's a siren, yes: we can agree on that much.

     Not for air raids, as this is from South Canada and unless British America and Mexico get furiously annoyed with the Yanks, they have little to fear from air attack.  No, it is a tornado siren undergoing a test run, with a lady loudly and repeatedly stating that this is a drill before they crank the sucker up and let blast.
     How exciting!  Art?

A tornado doing it's thing

     Imagine having weather so severe that you need to warn people to take cover in a specially-dug cellar, and do it by siren.  From Joe Lansdale I can tell you that, if caught in your house by a tornado, hang on to the bath taps; this is because your bath plumbing goes down into the earth and is firmly rooted there, and is thus unlikely to get whirled up and away.  O how I long for weather like that here in the Pond of Eden, where our weather is merely disgustrous and hardly ever dangerous.      Okay, motley, time to roll out the industrial sausage-making plant and get sausaging!

SAUSAGEY!

Conrad Is Angry!  Angry Angry ANGRY! Here an aside.  Apparently Manchester The United and The City Of Manchester ballfoot teams were playing last night, and one side won (dunno who and not especially bothered), which means that there is every prospect of a Have Your Say on the subject, hooray!  This means, of course, a river of venomous invective being ladled out on all sides, which is perfectly delicious to watch.  Occasionally one learns a bit about the ballfoot game, too, which is an unfortunate side-effect but worth enduring.

This is not a football.  Just so we're clear.

     Anyway, that's not what this rant is about.  No, it's about those <lots of swearing> codeword compilers.  I mean, come on - "FAJITA"?  That's just unfair.  And what about "POTPOURRI"?  That ought to have a hyphen in it, by the way, and since when was it fair to start including foreign languages in the codeword?  It's tricky enough with only two letters to go on without using abbreviations like "AMMO", frankly, never mind mystery niche franchise words like "LUTZ", which I am still not convinced is a proper word.
     So, Your Humble Scribe is ever so ANGRY!

VERY angry**!

Conrad Is Happy!
Not very happy, as that would be pushing it.
     No, what I am referring to is a term used in The Expanse novels, which caused a furrowing of brow at the time, yet which was so occasional that I never bothered to look it up or find out exactly what it meant.
     The word was "Teakettle".  Art?

I shan't chastise as this is actually relevant

     I checked on The Expanse's fanWiki, which confirmed what I suspected; "Teakettle" refers to spacecraft using chemical propellants, rather than ones with a basic fusion drive or an Epstein drive.  The kettle bit implies using these propellants in the manner of steam from a spout.

An example

     This is highly relevant from Episode 5 of Season 4 onwards, as The Engineer's sinister alien technology has rendered nuclear fusion inert; so the Rocinante and Edward Israel have to use teakettle thrusters to maintain orbit.
     Yes yes yes, I can swing from being VERY ANGRY to happy within the space of a single sentence.  That's how I roll.
    
     Wow, those sausages are looking good!  Okay, maybe I am very happy with my soon-to-be sausagey future.

The Populous Dictatorship Annoys The Loonwaffles
Communist China, in case you were wondering, and even if you were not.  Well, it took about sixty years since their old friends and new enemies the Sinisters put rovers on the Moon, but the Populous Dictatorship has managed to land a rover unit on the far side of the Moon.  There was a landing stage as well, which means both were able to take photographs of each other, and that's the first thing which will annoy the swivel-eyed loons.  Art?

Lander Chang-e 4

Rover

     That above means the swivel-eyed bumbletucks cannot point and whoop (taking care not to knock off their tinfoil hats) and shout "Fake!  All done in a studio because who was taking the photo!"
     The second point they will obsess about is how the PD's technology has been careful never to take photos of all the alien bases on the Moon's far side, which they know all about because there was a photo of a rock with a "C" on it which is secret NASA code for Alien Bases On The Far Side Of The Moon, at which point their keyboards short thanks to all the froth dripping upon them.
     I suppose I ought not to mock the loonwaffles as they are such easy targets.

Deluxe model

     But then again ...


*  Only by inference - I have finally returned DARPA's prototype Telepathy Helmet.
**  Did you get the sense of how very ANGRY I am?