If I Were To Say "River In The Sky"

You Might Be Forgiven For Thinking That I Was Quoting A Song Lyric
After all, there is that folk-rock band The Weepies, an appropriately soggy name for people going on about extreme precipitation in song form.

Quickly!  A hankie for the lady!

     Then again, I might be musing about the weather here in Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell (only "on" and not "in" since we have had a spell of unseasonably bright and sunny weather of late), because as you know the green and mossy-backed denizens of this metropolis have to regularly endure the Atlantic falling in sheets from the sky.  Art?

Hard to tell what's the canal and what's not

     In fact I refer to another ship lift, and you'll see what I mean about a river, and the sky, in a moment.  Art?

Behold the boat lift!

     This 200,000 ton monster is at Strepy-Thieu in Belgium, and connects the River Scheldt to the River Meuse.  There are two locks within, which operate independently.  Here's a view from the upstream side.  Art?

     Clearly inspired by the designs of futurologist Gerry Anderson.  The overall idea is very simple; boats or barges float into the lock at one level, the locks seals and then either descends or ascends, the barriers are raised and the riverine traffic goes on about it's business.  I'm not going to bombard you with a whole slew of figures, only that the difference in water levels is over 70 yards, and that each lock masses a minimum of 7,000 tons when carrying a boatload.  Art?

The downstream lock barrier descends

     This is from inside the lock having just taken aboard a downstream vessel.  The barrier is being lowered to seal the water and boats inside.   Next!

     The ascent begins.  The videos you can see on Youtube film this in either timelapse or speed up several times, as the whole upwards or downwards journey takes seven minutes, or ten yards a minute, or about a third of a mile per hour.  Speedy they are not!  Art?

Counterweights

     Yes, those big rectangular things are indeed counterweights, these ones going down as the lock goes up, and they will rest at ground level when the lock has reached the upstream position.  Art?

Approaching upstream

     As is apparent here, the ascending lock is about to reach the final position where it mates with the upstream release.  Apologies for the lack of clarity in this video, it wasn't that clear to begin with and putting it into full-screen mode hasn't helped make it any less muddy.  Art?

Free!  Free at last!

     The upstream barrier has been raised, allowing the boat to move out and onto the river.  You can see the water falling from the raised barrier, which is why the folks out in the open on the boat kept their hoods up.
     You can have a few more figures.  The volume of traffic on the two rivers has increased nine-fold since the ship lift opened in 2002, and well over two million tons of shipping pass through it annually.
     There you go, the fascinating world of ship lifts.  Go on, admit it, you're impressed, aren't you?

Sorry I couldn't find any puny humans for scale

     Motley, let's recreate this with <thinks> duct tape, cardboard and gallons of water*!

"Gamut"
It was a Cryptic crossword answer, before you ask.  I've heard and seen it in use, because I've read so much, yet never until today had I wondered where it came from.
     "The full range, as of emotions," defined my Collins Concise.  It went further.  "14C.  From medieval Latin, "Gamma", the lowest note of the hexachord as determined by Guido D'Arezzo."  Oh, him.  Art?

Peculiarly appropriate.  Also, Coincidence Hydra time <winces>

     You added Gamma and the first note of said scale, which used to be Ut.  The sequence went Ut, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Si - so with the whole thing you had a gamut.  "Ut" was changed to "Doh", and there you have the Hawkwind album title above.  Which was a large part of the "Space Ritual" album I was going on about a couple of moons ago.
     This is proof, if more were needed, that the Universe is conspiring against me.

The Coincidence Hydra.  Staple diet: Conrad's tender hind-quarters.

The Youth Of Yesteryear
Ah, me, what a fruitful source of entertainment r/AskReddit is.  I have a NuclearRevenge story that I shall have to blue-pencil a bit before posting, as it involves salaciousness; in the meantime I was reading what South Canadian students got up to in high school, where "got up to" means up to and including "malicious property damage and actual bodily harm".  These sort of things used to happen at the end of the senior's last term, as a kind of Rude Salute to their educational establishment.  Art?

This kinda place

     There was one which seems to have all the hallmarks of an urban legend: the seniors would release three (or four) pigs into the school, and paint numbers on their backs, viz: 1,2 and 4 (or 1,2,3 and 5).  The school janitors, custodians and teachers would thus spend days if not weeks searching for that missing pig, because they are so stupid and had never heard of such a prank ever in the history of South Canadian high schools.  Or something.

It's already a meme, for heaven's sake!

     Conrad wonders if this event ever actually happened.  Because he is a grumpy old empiricist.

Finally - 
I only need a short article to hit the Compositional Ton, so I shall only add in the bare bones of an article I intend to do more justice to at length and a later date.  Okay, there is a company in South Canada called the "Black Rifle Coffee Company", who make -
     - videos of current and ex-military South Canadians commenting on war films and how unrealistic they are.  And coffee, as well.  Art?

A big fan of that British radio program -

     Here is Matt, the owner, who decided he was going to do Rambo's exploding arrows in real life.  This is a much bigger challenge than it might seem at first, for all sorts of technical reasons, the principal one being Not Getting Killed, which we will definitely be going into in more detail.  Because what's not to like about Exploding Arrows?

     And with that we are most definitely done!

*  Tomorrow I'll see if anyone has done the same in Lego