I Have Been A Little Lax

Also, I Am A Terrible Person
But we knew that already, didn't we?  The two things are interconnected, because - O! mis-spent time! - I have become entirely too fond of reading AskReddit stories of Revenge.  These come in different flavours of Vengeance; from PettyRevenge, to ProRevenge, to NuclearRevenge, to SupernovaRevenge.  Some of these have very dark endings.  I did think I'd be able to play them in the background whilst typing words of wit, wisdom and wonder, except not.  Art?

Gearhead?

     If you want one example, that's not too extreme - because there are some that are! - one lady carried on signing up her dreadful ex-manager to countless e-mail spam sites, on an annual basis, as well as using her previous career-admin privileges to reset ex-manager's entire workforce's e-mail addresses, again, on an annual basis.  Every year.  For nineteen years.
     Back to the Second Unpleasantness.  Yes, we do jump around here, please try to keep up!  Okay, there is a memoir by author Sydney Jary entitled "18 Platoon", which is the tale of his leading 18 Platoon across Europe from July 1944.  Normally I annotate half a dozen pages per night, which has been displaced by gloatingly listening to people getting hideous come-uppances over Reddit.

Only available for big £££s

     Now, there is a horrid little anecdote about Sydney and 18 Platoon clearing a French village when they come under machine-gun fire and have to take cover.  Sydney managed to get opposite the wall the Teutons were hiding behind and firing from, and lobbed a Pattern 36 hand grenade over said wall.  He stated that they shortly found the bodies of the two gunners a hundred yards away, having bled to death from the terrible wounds inflicted by the hand grenade.  You do not mess about with the Pattern 36.

Killer pineapple

     This is rather in contrast to the Teuton "Steilgranat" or Stick Grenade, which Tommy knew as a "Tatty-masher".  It had a very lightweight metal jacket, and relied on blast rather than shrapnel, so in more extreme training it could have the cord pulled, then balanced head down on a helmet, being worn by a live Teuton, and not kill him.  Though he'd probably have the migraine from Hell afterwards.  Art?

Hence the "Potato-masher" nickname

     In last night's annotation, Sydney had led a reconnaissance patrol into Teuton territory for over two miles, until they were challenged by a shout, which sent them to ground.  Sydney lay on a muddy riverbank, legs wide apart, when a thrown tatty-masher landed squarely between his legs.  It sank into the mud, went off with a "pop" and didn't even singe his trousers.
   Of course, given the handle, you could fling stick grenades a long way, except they tended to not do a whole lot of harm where they landed.
     There, I think we covered two completely different subjects in sufficient depth for tonight.  Motley, shall we break out the popcorn and toffee?

You can see the resemblance

Something Has Gone Badly Right
If you read BOOJUM! with any regularity, then you know I fear getting too popular, because I'm pretty sure some of the pictures on here are copyright, and besides that there are libel laws, and both The Metro and First Bus's solicitors would be hammering at my door with injunctions.  So!  It was with a touch of trepidation that I noticed this yesterday.  Art?

     Breaking the double-ton is vanishingly rare here.  Also, look at the map below, where the Ruffians are simply lapping up BOOJUM!  This may because we frequently mock Tsar Putin, who had better be able to take it.  I bet he cries himself to sleep in the Kremlin each time we take cruel pot-shots at him.

"I - I - I- just have something in my eye."
<snivels pathetically>

More Of Guy N. Smith
You know, the one-man publishing machine, known mainly for incredibly schlocky and trite horror novels; the MacDonalds of horror fiction, you might say <another lawsuit in the offing, hmmm?>
     You may recall me ripping into his tome "Killer Crabs".  Well, just for a lark I checked Abebooks by clicking the link they had built into their "Retro Monsters in Books" feature.
     YOU WHAT!
     I don't believe this.  Some piker wants £857.44 for a copy.  Art?

Note the "New English Library" icon top port

     All it says is "New".  Not a signed First Edition.  And NEL only publish paperbacks.  So - what the holy heck is going on here?
     Bah!

Some Reciprocity
NO!  That is not a rude word.  Somewhat surprisingly, Blogger's wretched South Canadian spell checker doesn't jib at it.  I merely wanted to put a good word in for the Ruffians, since they did me the (somewhat double-edged) compliment of reading the blog in large numbers earlier this week.
     So, allow me to hold forth and rail about the ridiculously miniscule amount of military history works that detail the Ruffian's history in the First Unpleasantness.  I can only think of one, Norman Stone's excellent "The Eastern Front 1914 - 1917", which of course I own.  Art?

My Edition

     Can you name one battle that the Tsarist Army fought on the Eastern Front?  I bet not.  Which was the only one of the Allies to invade Wilhemine Germany?  The Ruffians.  Who diverted critical German reinforcements during the Battle of the Marne?  The Ruffians.  Who broke the Austro-Hungarian army in 1916?  The Ruffians.  Who, despite falling out of the war a year early, had still suffered 200% of British casualties?  The Ruffians.      You can kind of, semi-accurately, include Solzhenitsyn's "August 1914" and his other Red Wheel works, except they're fiction.  Evocative and wonderfully written, yet still fiction.

CAUTION!  Long and complicated

     I may come back to this theme, it has legs.

Finally -
Thankfully there doesn't seem to have been any panic-buying of newspapers, so I managed to get a copy of the Manchester Evening News this morning (I know this makes no logical sense, just roll with it), and the next-to-last wholemeal loaf on the shelf in a convenience store in the centre of Gomorrah-in-the-Irwell.  I shall spare their blushes, but I also saw a rat scuttle across their inner window, which I reported to an utterly gobsmacked and horrified shop assistant.

Cuteness personified!

     And with that, we are done!