Is It April The First?

That, Vulnavia, Is A Rhetorical Question
For I know it is actually the Twenty-Seventh of June, this year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Twenty.
     "Why do you question the calendar, O Overheated Sock-Wearing Scarf-Clad Sweaty Bundle?" I hear you quibble.
     Pausing only to say that neither socks nor scarf have graced by exterior (or interior) today, I shall explicate.  Art!

Ignore the intrusive finger!

     Conrad had whizzed by this item on Facebook before thinking "That looked like the fake photo from the Patterson-Gimlin film" and going back to it.  
     I don't know if your eyesight is good enough to resolve the background script or the caption, which reads "Cryptozoology Diploma Course".

P-G pose but in snow

     Yes, really.  You too can read about things that don't exist, which never did, and pay 200 English pounds for the privilege.  For all the assertions of people that the chupacabra or Nessie or the Yeti or Bigfoot are real, nobody has ever produced evidence for any of them.  Chupacabra hairs have been analysed and shown to be from dogs, and Nessie of the Surgeon's Photo has been widely proven to be a complete fraud, whilst the "Bigfoot" of the Patterson-Gimlin film is a staged fake from someone blatantly out to make money.

That'll be £50, please

     Dear me.  Sometimes I wonder if i) It's worth taking over a planet with such a depressingly dim population and ii) If the depressingly dim population will even survive to be enslaved.  

Listy Speaks The Truth
I refer, of course, to David Lister.  The author David Lister - Art?

No!  Wrong person!

     The author David Lister who runs the blog "Overlord's Blog" over on Blogger and who's written a couple of books about tanks and guns and shizzle like that which has absolutely nothing to do with Jewish space exploration.  There - is that specific enough for you, Art?

http://overlord-wot.blogspot.com/2020_06_21_archive.html

     There you go, Listy's latest article.  In it he details when the Home Guard fought the Axis on British soil.  I shan't spoil it for you, so if that's whetted your appetite you'll just have to go read it.
     Anyway, Listy mentions that the broadcasting of "Dad's Army" from 1968 onwards has rather skewed our perception of the Home Guard, because it was not filled with people as clueless or buffoonish as Captain Mainwaring or Corporal Jones.

It is very funny, though

     This struck a chord with me, because I remember reading a paragraph or two in "A Full Life" by Sir Brian Horrocks, about his defence of the south-east coast of This Sceptred Isle in the aftermath of Dunkirk.  His regular brigade had frequent training exercises against the Home Guard, and he said fighting them was "like punching a cushion", because they would melt away, only to use their local knowledge to regroup and get back into the fight somewhere else.  He was also keenly aware that many of the privates or corporals of the HG alongside him had held far higher rank than him in the First Unpleasantness, and knew tactics, operations and strategy a lot better than him.

"Lethal Dad Violence"

     Page 95 in the Leo Cooper 1974 edition.

You Can't Leave Me This Way, "You Can't Leave Me This Way"
Every so often Conrad hears a new music from a television program that impresses him.  Not often, I'm a difficult audience, but it's how I made the acquaintance of Shawn Smith's emotional hammer "Wrapped In Your Memory", and Goldfrapp's "Caravan Girl".  I know what you're thinking - use Shazam to determine what song is by whom, job done, we can all go home.
     NOT SO FAST!
     If it's on television then you quite frequently have dialogue looped over the music, which spoofs Shazam from the start.
     "Okay, O Hair-Splitting Pedant," I hear you riposte.  "Check out the end credits".

The Hair-Splitting Pedant: a proud portrait

     That's what I tried to do on an episode of "Wynona Earp", except stupid Netflix had disabled the scroll bar and I couldn't stop or pause the credits.  Being especially quick of eye and pen, I wrote down "You Can't Leave Me This Way" as the title - before it swept on and I didn't get the artist's name.
     That was half the loaf but you know Conrad - large, pedantic and greedy: I wanted the whole baguette.  So it was off to Google and "Wynona Earp" and "Episode 10" and -
     Soren Bryce.
     Gotcha!
     Well, kind of.  The song's not on Spotify that I can find, nor is it on Youtube.  But I got my loaf.

My baguette

Conrad's Gizzard Troubles Him
Or perhaps it's a conscience pang?  I don't think I've had one of those since 1987, and the insurance covered the cost of rebuilding the orphanage -
     You see, I was about to carry out A Little Musical Critique on the next section of "Bohemian Rhapsody", which is:

"Too late, my time has come

Sends shivers down my spine

Body's aching all the time

Goodbye, everybody, I've got to go

Gotta leave you all behind and face the truth"

     Given the current world situation thanks to Covid-19, to jovially mock this would inevitably offend someone, probably a whole lot of someones, especially considering the next verse, which goes on about dying.
     Instead we will contemplate that Queen album with lots of bum, naked ones at that, female too, all over the cover.  You couldn't get away with that nowadays, Vulnavia.

You were expecting a picture of naked ladies?  Bafoon!  We are so, so SFW here.

     <somewhere Brian May weeps with relief>

An Ode To Road
Conrad, as you may be aware if you have dipped into BOOJUM! from time to time, is interested in that dullest of military subjects; Logistics.  Or the art of supplying what your army needs at the right time in the right amount.  It sounds simple, doesn't it?
     WRONG!  As Clauzewitz said, even the simplest thing in war is very complicated, and you need look no further than the supermarket shelves at the beginning of the Covid crisis: they were swept bare when the stupid, the greedy and the selfish fell upon them as the Assyrians did upon their enemies.  

The Assyrians: big on big.

     How were the shelves restocked?  By virtue of HGVs carrying goods to stores from depots, and the goods arrived in depots courtesy of rail delivery.  This is logistics.
     Imagine how much more difficult it is to supply your army in the field when there are no trains, no motor vehicles, and no paved roads.  O, no road signs, either.  This is the logistics landscape of the English Civil Unpleasantness, which Conrad has been doing some background research on.  O yes, add in marauding soldiery of the other side looking to capture and loot your wagon convoys, and marauding soldiery of your own side, whom are not above a little light pilfering and poaching of their own side -
     We shall definitely come back to this because I wrote loads about it.

Sadly no photos of the real thing, which is kind of obvious when you think about it

Finally -
You may not have realised this, because I certainly didn't, but the Green Artichoke (sounds like a rather rubbish Marvel Villain, doesn't it?) is a species of edible thistle, which becomes apparent if you see it in bloom.  Art?

Thus.

     Unfortunately at this point it has become woody and inedible, so you'd be a Broke Artichoke Bloke if you were raising them in your allotment.
     And with that we are done. *  I think it was the Assyrians.  Bad guys from the Bible, anyway.