The Roiling Stones

No! That Is Not A Typo -
For we are neither talking about the South Canadian magazine (the exact nature of which is a bit of a mystery to Conrad) nor that band of zombie cyborg tax exiles, you know whom I'm talking about.  Well, we might get to "Rolling Stone" later in this blog, I'll have to see how we get on and what the word count ends up at.

"Rolli One"

     Okay, after tonight's title, we are very obviously talking about siege warfare, specifically that during the English Civil Unpleasantness, because I've just dug out what few books I have about the ECW.  Art?

My edition

     Here an aside.  It was a myth promulgated (yes, another word you never expected to see today) by the Victorians that the Cavaliers all wore big floppy hats and the Roundheads all had pot helmets.  In fact both sides were frequently dressed the same, requiring them to wear a special "mark" or emblem to prevent fatal confusion in the field.  Most famously, Sir Thomas Fairfax, one of the chief commanders of the Parliamentary army at the battle of Marston Moor, escaped capture from the Royalists by simply removing the white slip of paper from his hat band used as a field mark by his fellow Parliament officers.
     There were, apparently, some 300 sieges during the ECW, ranging from elaborately planned and prepared ones that lasted for months, to small skirmishing affairs not involving a lot.  Take Basing House, for example.  Art?

Well defended!

     In the instance of places like this, where they had stout stone walls as defences, you the besieger had to first of all, cut them off.  This might seem obvious, because it is, though it's easier to say than do.  Once you've prevented anyone from getting in or out, you then set to in digging emplacements for your artillery pieces, so your gunners can maliciously molest free from sudden death.  Then you set to with shot, preferably iron, so it does more damage, and you pound the stone walls until large parts of them have collapsed, at which point you storm the defenders.  Hence today's title.
     There's a lot more to it than that, but you have the basics there.  I shall probably go into the subject again in more detail as I read the book.
     O, one thing - it doesn't appear that the siege of Troy was very effective or close, as the city seems to have been able to obtain supplies with little difficulty.

Art!  You bafoon <sounds of Tazer being charged up>

"Sniping In France" By Hesketh-Pritchard
I shall keep this brief as we don't want to have your brains glaze over, do we?  At the 190 page mark, Ol' Hesky is retelling the tale of how he was training Portuguese troops to the number of twenty in sniping.
     Yes, Portugal was on the Allied side in the First Unpleasantness and sent a couple of divisions to the Western front.  Art?

"Porks" as they were immediately nicknamed

     Normally the only thing you hear about the Porks is how inept they were and how quickly they collapsed when attacked during the Kaiserschlacht, so reading HK's account of how keen and committed his sniping trainees were is a nice variant.
     There, I said i'd keep it short, didn't I?

"O Noes!" Squeaked My Wallet
Your Humble Scribe was reading a Twitter thread posted by Bryn Hammond, who is a proper published author with books and everything, about how poor the Youtube presentation by a South Canadian was on the First Unpleasantness.  A couple of South Canadians then mentioned how horribly expensive some specialist publications on the FWW from South Canadian military sources could be.
     "Eeek" squeaked my wallet.  "Be strong, Conrad, change to a different thread, and most especially don't - you were making notes, weren't you?"
     Guilty as charged.  I checked on Abebooks and the "The A.E.F. Way Of War" ("A.E.F." meaning "American Expeditionary Force") that had been said to cost $300 <wallet squeaks in anguish>

The offending article

     - was on sale for only 30 English pounds.  There was another one ("King of Battle") from a specialist military publisher going for only £18.50 with free postage!
     <wallet continues to look pale but is recovering>
     I haven't ordered either of them, that's how strong-willed I am.

Bottom Of The Flops #9
You ought to have read Saturday's posts to make sense of this.  We are at the second entry in TopTenz list of 10 gigantic failures at the box office, and Number Nine is - 

"Solo"
(Which is how the audience felt)

     This one ended up losing £50 million at the box office, which is a genuine achievement for a film franchise that is essentially a licence to print money by the billions.  The original directors were sacked before it was finished, which is always a bad thing, and then it had a ton of very expensive reshoots, all of which jacked the cost up.  Then it went up against "Justice League" and "Deadpool", with a very lacklustre advertising campaign.  Surprise!  It tanked.  Conrad has seen it and it's not a bad film, if you exclude how slowly those blaster bolts travel (about 75 m.p.h. it has been calculated).  Doubtless the critics will be telling us what an undiscovered masterpiece it is an a decade's time.

Solo, anticipating that headline in ten years time

Finally -
I only need a short article to hit the Compositional Ton, so let us deconstruct a Horror Trope, because there's no shortage of them.  Picture the screenplay ...

DAD:  Whatever can be making that strange noise in the cupboard?
MUM (Because this is a British horror film): I don't know, dear, and it's so inconvenient that the power-cut happened right now.
DAD: I'll just get a torch and find out, shall I?
MUM:  Better call it a flashlight, darling, or the South Canadians will think you mean a bundle of pitch-soaked straw on the end of a stick.DAD <clutching his torch and opening cupboard door slowly>:  Goodness me!
MUM:  We're allowed one swear, dearest, it's a 12 rating.
DAD: It was the cat.  However did it get in there?
MUM: Ah - we don't have a cat.DAD <hastily shutting cupboard door>: Okay, hotel room for us tonight.

     Yes, he's a coward.  No, they don't die.