In A Dagga Da Vida

My Finger's On The Trigger, I'm Telling You!
That title, O Otiose One, is a pun.  Of course, to recognise same you would have to recognise the original and, since it is neither a rap song nor the pre-packed product of a manufactured bunch of androgynous witless mannequins, I should point out that Conrad refers to "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida", which came out in 1968.  Art?

By Iron Butterfly

     So, the first person to point their misshapen fingers and gloat about "A spelling mistake" will be teleported into the heart of the sun.  And your sunblock factor 50 wont help you then.
     Okay, the reason I began with this title is because of that Polish recipe I painstakingly wrote out in translation.  It took ages.  And you know what that means, don't you?  Yes.  You get to share it, like it or not.  Art?

     Extreme close-up so you can appreciate how much easier it is to read the blog in Trebuchet font than in Conrad's idiosyncratic handwriting.  Especially since he loves pens with a very thin nib.  Okay, at upper left you can see the quantity "Dag" against dried mushrooms and bacon.
     Here an aside, and further evidence, were it needed, that Conrad's mind is as retentive as the world's biggest rubbish dump.  I recall a comment from one of the airborne participants in the drop on Arnhem, a signaller, in "A Bridge Too Far".  He peremptorily told another soldier to give him a hand with what he called "Dags".  These were the (extremely heavy) batteries used in British army radios.

South Canadian, but you get the idea.

     Somewhat to his horror, the chap in uniform he'd been ordering around turned out to be Major General Robert Urquhart, commander of the entire parachute division.
     You'll also have to take my word for it, because nowhere on the internet can any of this information be either found or validated.  Heh.
     Anyway, Polish weights and measures.  Using Google Translate didn't bring up anything useful or practical.  A more general recourse to Google and a sneaking suspicion at the back of my cerebral cortex led to the discovery that "Dag" is a colloquial abbreviation for "Decagram", or 10 grams.  Which makes sense.  If it were a strange Polish colloquial abbreviation for "185 kilograms" we'd be in trouble.

We'd be starting with this.

     I'm glad we got that sorted out.  Just think, a dag a day will keep the doctor away, especially if it's a dag of full-metal jacket, and you'd be hard-pressed to get a home visit at the moment.
     Motley!  Go and let Kevin in!

Kevin?

Back To That Wargame
SIT BACK DOWN!  As I was about to illustrate, I've done the background admin for a small set-piece battle using the Polemos rules.  This involves creating an army for both the Royalist's Oxford forces and the Earl of Essex's countering force.  Art?

     You can't see but all the units there have labels on the underside that give their title, what kind of quality they are, and how they are either armed or conduct cavalry operations.  I now have have to give the rules a quick perusal.  I did see that one of the more intriguing aspects of Polemos is the idea of "Tempo".  Each of the commanding officers has a rating, Good, Indifferent or Bad, and this generates Tempo Points; at the start of each move you roll a dice and get some more TPs.  The question is how to use them, because you can trump your opponent and move first if you commit more TPs; but you have to keep some back in order to move.  Then again, if any of your units are looking a bit wobbly, you need to spend some TPs to rally them.  The idea is that you never have enough TPs and thus have to make decisions about what takes priority - much as in real life.  Art?

This is a pike stand, NOT a flash mob with sticks <sighs>

      I expect to get a few turns in tonight, rather laggardly, as I'll be going backwards and forwards over the rules to make sense of them.
     We now return you to our more usual wibble and flibble*.

"ZEUGMA"
Another crossword clue that I was quite chuffed at getting correct, because be honest - how many of you out there would have known the answer from the clue "Figure of speech (6)"?  And hands up how many would have confused it with a prehistoric whale?  

Zeuglodons being all zeugly.  Or whatever it is they do.

     Of course you find some bampots claiming that the Zeuglodon is still alive and hiding in the oceans, hence sea serpents.  NO!  WRONG!  And besides, we discussed one credible reason for sea serpent sightings in today's earlier post.  Which, of course, you have already read?  Because you've either read it or you're deadit.**

Danger!  In A Dangerous Way, Mind
I'm a bit torn.  Going through the list of really horribly toxic shizzle that you ought not to mess with, nearly all of them so far have been toxic as a by-product of what they are, until I came to "Amiton", which is another name for one of the so-called "V agents", which are incredibly potent nerve agents.  These are designed to be ghastly on purpose, so I think we'll give them a miss.
     Instead - we shall have Aniline!  Art?

Aniline water-stain remover for leather
(Wow, that was dull)

     This stuff has been around forever as a dye and for other uses, in medicine and - er - rocket fuels, which is enough to give one pause.  Medical and rocket fuel.  Not a combination I thought I'd be writing this evening.
     Anyway, it really isn't to be taken lightly.  It's poisonous if you happen to drink it, so don't store casually in open coffee mugs.  It can cause an allergic reaction if spilled on the skin, but it's also toxic on contact, so you probably won't live long enough to worry about having to get cosmetic surgery.  Don't get it in your eyes, either, although by then you've probably already inhaled a fatal dose and won't be very bothered about eyes-running-like-taps.  If you happened to survive all that, then it has cumulative effects and you may find yourself simply dropping dead ten years later.  
     Aniline.  The dye to die for, so to speak.

What you need to wear to take your aniline for walkies.

     And with that, we are done!  Done done done!

*  But we'll be back here, O yes matey.
**  Which is a zeugma.