Roaming Roman

O I Feel Clever
Which is not the same as actually being clever.  Close enough.  Okay, we all know that Your Humble Scribe is a very sad man who chooses bottles of beer based on how interesting their name or label design is, as opposed to their taste.  So - Art?

     Case in point.  A few cans of this and you'd be incapable of crossing anything, it's 6.9%, which of course I never realised because all I read was the title, which is where today's title comes in.
     Okay, time for a little history.  The River Rubicon delineated (a word you never expected to hear today) the northernmost limits of the Roman republic back in the day prior to 49 BC.  As a Roman general, you were utterly forbidden from entering Roman territory at the head of an army and if you did then you were marked for death, and so were the soldiers under your command.  Guess who utterly ignored this edict?

Spectacular.  But using a bridge would have been safer.

     Julius Caesar, that's whom.  He brought the whole 13th Legion with him, and by crossing the Rubicon made it clear he was going to stage a coup d'etat, triggering the Civil War and eventually leading to his becoming dictator*.  In a way the law about proscribing the soldiers who followed him was it's own undoing, because they then had nothing to lose and everything to gain by seizing power.  The phrase has now come to mark any irrevocable step, such as O say jumping off Durdle Door.

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     Quite what this has to do with a can of beer is beyond me; but, count on it, I shall report back to you on what it tastes like later today.     Motley!  Let's see you try and cross the River Bug.  And to make it more of a challenge, you can wear this rucksack.  Lead ingots, if you're curious.
Thanks For The TANKSYesterday we began to broach the subject of using elephant guns against the Teuton Terror Turtles of the First Unpleasantness, which means I now have to give you a lecture about said armoured vehicles, as I'm prettttttty certain this is not something present in the mass media on a daily basis.  In fact some of you might be asking "Did the Krauts have any panzers in the First Big Bad Bash?"
     Well yes.  They had armoured cars.  Art?

Nope, sorry, I don't know which end is the front, either

     Which had very limited off-road capability.  You can't see one of these navigating No Man's Land, can you?     When it came to actual tanks, the Teutons were very ill-served, because their generals were convinced of their ubermensch status up until late 1917, when the British massed tank attack at Cambrai gave them a terrible fright.  They then fielded a few dozen British tanks captured after the battle, and I may be able to find a picture for you -

"Under New Management"

     These didn't last long as there were no spare parts, so once they broke down - and tanks of this era did just that if you so much as squinted at them - they were merely a metal pillbox with a poor field of fire.  Then came the A7, which must have been designed by a committee.  Art?

With puny human for scale
(Apparently an Australian, probably looking for something to steal)

     This was a monstrous thirty-ton steel box on tracks, with very low ground clearance and a tendency to fall over on anything but dead flat ground. It also had a crew of at least 18 men, sometimes as many as 25**, 6 machine guns and a 57 m.m. cannon, and a tendency to break down if anyone so much as thought about squinting at it.  Only 20 were built and they did not cover themselves with glory.
     Oh, I just looked it up - and it *was* designed by a committee.     Okay, enough wibble about TANK for one post, we shall come back to this.
Yes I See What You Did There
For Lo! we are back to "Rolling Stone"'s Top 50 Sci-Fi shows ever, and another one Conrad can get behind - Number 26, "Torchwood".  Yes yes yes, the title is an anagram of "Doctor Who", but unlike that dramamentary series, "Torchwood" is completely fictional***.  Art?

Yes, that is Burn Gorman

     It got better as it went on, which is a refreshing change from how television series normally work, ending up with the very thought-provoking "Miracle Day" in 2011, after which it's been on hiatus, as Russell T. Davies, the creator, left it alone for "personal reasons".  Maybe it will come back.  We need more sci-fi series set in Wales.

Thank You Brain - Again
I didn't post this when it happened as you can have too much of Conrad's mental makeup; I had already posted about Lagomorphs, too ("Rabbits" to you).
     Okay, that other word that popped up in my brain was "Merganser".  Why on earth it would do so it beyond me, because - Art?

It's a duck

     Right.  Conrad's interest in ducks rests entirely in eating them, and he doubts very much whether he's ever eaten "Crispy Merganser Rolls", and raising ducks for a living seems a dubious if not positively sketchy way to earn a living.
     So, thank you, brain, and now let us move on.

Finally -
Conrad was perusing Abebooks last night, and once again found evidence that some South Canadian vendors are abusing postage rates.  Take a look at this - 

The side and size of what we're talking about

     You'd normally expect to pay about £10 postage and delivery for a book of this size.  Well, one merchant wanted £40 for the book, which is fair enough, and another £60 for post and packing, which is ripping people off.
      I know you share my pain and anger, gentle reader.  I shall now go and assuage (another word you never expected to see today) both with a pot of loose leaf Darjeeling.  Chin chin!


*  Not "King" because that would have been a bit too much.
**  Very small men, one presumes.
***  Thank heavens!