Curses!

I Believe I Have Bemoaned The 24 Hour Day Recently
Yes, I could move to Mars and exploit their 25 hour day, but having to commute 40 million miles is a bit of downer on a Monday morning.  Forget Venus; yes, a day there is 6 Earth months long, which is great.  The crushing surface pressure and hellish temperatures?  Not so good.

Art!  Wrong Venus!

     And let me reiterate that Your Humble Scribe cannot wait to retire, which will give me time to really deal with the Book Mountain.  Today I was reading "England's Last War With France" by Colin Smith and Alan Moorehead's "African Trilogy", about the brief war waged between Britain and the Commonwealth (because there were plenty of Australian and Indian troops involved) versus Vichy Syria.  I only made 3 notes whilst reading, too - because how familiar are you with Circassian cavalry?

Thus

     We won't go into Circassia itself - things were complicated enough in Syria without adding Caucasian culture to the pot.  Another note was about the vile M. Conti, a variety of sidekick or lickspittle to General Dentz, who appears to have slithered out of the history books like a greased pig.
     Before beginning my reading I'd created a huge pan of Bigos, Polish Hunter's Stew, and - you know, it's pretty tasty.  That took plenty of preparation. Art?

     Then I did a couple of Codewords, just to keep my eye in, and a crossword when I had to reboot my laptop, and I was trying to track down another comic strip I vaguely remember, and have narrowed the field down to a"TV 21" annual from either 1971 or 1973.  Saying that takes considerably less time than tracking it down did.
     Then I began waging a second English Civil Unpleasantness wargame using the 'Polemos' rules, which, if Art can -

     Aren't I terrible, I've not painted the river yet.  You can see the Parliamentarian army entering at stage starboard.  They have a choice here: cross the river, in all it's unpainted glory, at the bridges, which means they have to cross in March Column.  NO!  There is no debate.  You can only cross in March Column, which makes you very vulnerable as you shake out into a proper line formation, but which will be quicker than marching all the way to the watershed where the Pileoric River rises.  For as the Roundheads march, the Royalist baggage train is making it's escape.

A right shower!

     Also, I was complaining that you can't simply turn troops around and skedaddle from the battlefield with these rules; you have to laboriously wheel them which takes ages and lots of room.  Well, I came across the "Fall Back"rule, which we might see used here.  Oh, and using March Column correctly has speeded up the game's beginning no end.
     Then, whilst doing more research, I came across a website that hosts compilations of British comics from the Sixties up to the Nineties.  I shan't name it, nor provide a link, because Your Humble Scribe is unsure exactly how legal it is.
     - and that, Your Honour, is why the day whizzed past and it is now 01:37 and I have to be up for work in 4 hours time*.

"The day began well ..."

     Motley, you know how yoghurt cools and soothes the mouth after the ingestion of a very spicy meal?  I want you to try this Capsaicin yoghurt smoothie**.  Ta!

Steel Yourself
One of the things that I've taken away from Adam Tooze's "Wages Of Destruction" is how the Nazi economy was always on the verge of a crisis, which interacted with Teuton industry to create an even bigger crisis.  As in there wasn't enough labour to mine the coal, so the steel didn't get made, and arms production was cut back, until Todt or Speer managed to get a couple of other plates spinning and something else went badly wrong in a different industry.

The Ruhr

     Here is where Conrad has a strategic point to make about that wonder-gun the Wehraboos all wet themselves over, the MG42, with it's cyclic rate of 1,200 rounds per minutes, or about twice what other machine guns managed.
     1,200 bullets per minute.  Bullets made with steel cartridges. Steel, one of the rate-limiting factors in Teuton industry.  I bet they didn't ask Teuton soldiers to sweep up the empties and recycle them, did they!  As I have mentioned, there is a considerable strategic burden placed upon the Wehrmacht in excess of other combatants, thanks to the MG42 and it's rate of fire, and now we have another one placed upon industry and the economy.  Someone somewhere is going to get an "Excellent" grading on their Master's thesis about these two factors.
     Bah!

Herr Schickelgruber is sad.

"Manichean"
I do beg your pardon, I went and bragged on Facebook about looking this term up in my Collins Concise, and then never bothered to explain the definition.
     It comes from the musings of a Persian philosopher, Mani, who posited a universe of the Good, the Light and the Spiritual, which was in a state of eternal struggle against the Bad of Darkness and Materialism.  If Art bestirs himself ...

Manichean art

     If you see anyone referencing this idea, then they are referring to a very dualist perspective of no great nuance: Right or Wrong, Wonderful or Awful, Salt or sugar in porridge, those kind of two-element spectrums.  It's a satisfying philosophy if not a realistic one, since Hom. Sap. as a species are pretty much shades of grey.

The Monkees: philosopher poets

Finally - 
Conrad only occasionally bores you with What I Had For Lunch photographs,which are also known as I'm Desperately Sad Look At Me Me Me pictures, so I shan't add in a photograph of my breakfast.  However - and you knew that was coming - I can still tell you.  This ante meridian I gobbled down a bowl of porridge, for the first time in at least six months, since I had discovered a great big bag of it in the corner cupboard at the weekend.  Yes yes yes, it's probably Best Before End 2018, except porridge never goes off.
     Blimey, it's as filling as Bigos.  Your Humble Scribe is having a smaller lunch than usual thanks to being aswill with Darjeeling and porridge.  
     I think the last time I had porridge was at the Dark Tower, when I'd got no bread to toast and no butter to put on it even if I had.  Let's have a moment's silence for the Dark Tower, which is even darker nowadays because nobody works there any more!  Art?

Thus

      From porridge oats to power outages, we cover all bases here at BOOJUM!


     And with that we are definitely done!

*  Some of these facts might not be true.
** Rated at 2,000,000 Scovilles.