Back With A Bang

I Warned You
So it's not my fault if you find your brains glazing over, you should have used more intravenous coffee.
     Gunpowder!  Widely credited as an invention of the Chinese, no European nation of the sixteenth century onwards could really describe itself as "sophisticated" unless it was able to blow it's enemies into dogfood with this explosive mixture.  Art!

Barrels of bang

     Here an aside.  Yes, Conrad was one of a clutch of schoolboys who procured the ingredients for gunpowder and made some BUT I'M NOT SAYING ANY MORE THAN THAT! because MI5.  Making gunpowder is a tricky business if you lack the proper tools and experience, especially the latter.  For instance, one Edward Morton was trying to produce gunpowder at home in 1644, to supply the armies of King Charles.  Trying to do this with a wife, five children (and, at a guess, a cat and two dogs running around) was always going to be tricky, and for all we know Ol' Ted didn't bother to put out his pipe -
      You can guess how this ends, can't you?  Yes, all that was left was a pile of rubble and they all went to Heaven.

"Mind that candle, childr -"

     The basic ingredients of gunpowder in Stuart times were charcoal, sulphur and what they called "saltpetre", which we today know as "Potassium Nitrate", and you need to be wary of anything that has nitrates in it, as they tend to be chemical mayhem just waiting to happen.  Back in the day they obtained saltpetre by processing and reducing pigeon c Pigeon guano, outhouse soil and any urine going spare.  

Petre and his salt

     The armies of those days used gunpowder for their muskets - obviously! - and the troops who specifically guarded the powder barrels in the baggage train were armed with  expensive "Snaphaunce" or flintlock muskets, rather than have them carry around the match that was used for firing most muskets.  Art?

The matchlock.
(CAUTION!  Attracts pyromaniacs)

Snappy and hauncy

     It's worth noting that Sir Ralph Hopton, one of the best Royalist generals, was badly injured and temporarily lost his sight in an accident that involved powder barrels blowing up near him.  Not to be mucked about with!
     I think we'll come back to this subject, it has legs*.
     Motley, lay in a stock of fireworks that we may ponder on this matter once the shades of night have fallen!

Angry Birds
Okay, "Bird" singular, for we are referring to the Very Cross Czech lady Marketa.  What is she showing umbrage about this time?  O Marketa!
     "Confuse Budejovicky Budvar with South Canadian Budweiser"
     Hmmmmm I can see her point here.  The South Canadians stole the marque and the original recipe, and have pestered endlessly about buying out the brewery in their attempt at world lager domination, so you can understand a patriotic Czech getting annoyed.  After all, Bohemia = Beer.  Art?

Hint: this is not in South Canada

     I think we can allow a little for tourists in Czechia whom originate in either Perfidious Albion or South Canada, as all they'll be familiar with is the EVIL COUNTERFEIT lager as it rams the image down their eyes thanks to it's enormous advertising budget**.  However! ignorant Continentals, Marketa, are fair game and you can poke them with sharp pointy things.

That may be overkill, Marketa.

Red Hot Sand
It sounds like an excellent name for a band, doesn't it?  "Introducing 'Setting The Desert Alight' by Red Hot Sand, with their breakout single 'Everybody's Dune It' - " as the DJ might say.
     But no!  I picked this practice up when reading about the epic siege of Tyre back in 332 BC.  If I may explicate a little ...

From the Tyrian battlements

     Alexander the Great's forces built a causeway out to sea in order to be able to reach the walls of the city, and one of the Tyrian replies came in the form of - red hot sand.  A couple of accounts I've read say that they heated up the sand in iron and copper vessels until it was red hot and then flung it at the besieging Greeks.

Alex-sand-er in charge***.

     Is this even possible?  Conrad is not sure what the thermal coefficiency of sand is, though if you heat it too much it becomes glass and there's no doubting the horrid burning tendencies of molten glass.  But sand at red heat?  Surely, as you whang it through the air at your opponent, it will cool rapidly, for it is finely divided particulate matter with a relatively large surface area, and it will tend to also spread out and dissipate in flight.
     This is something that bears inspection, although I don't have any sources of siege warfare in the classical era.
     And the idea of a band ...  hmmmmmm there's potential for an awful lot of punnery there.  Cast your minds back to the early years of the blog, when we regularly featured those fictional punk rockers The Skreeming Voles!

"An amazing double-bill tonight, music fans - The Skreeming Voles and Red Hot Sand"

     Apropos of nothing, I have to say that porridge is filling stuff.  Feeling full and only half of it eaten.  Yes yes yes, I know Edna would gladly dive in and help but we're watching her diet at the moment, the pudgy pup.

Finally -
I feel like finishing with another spoof of the horror trope.  Let's take a look at oh, say, The Monster In The Lake, shall we?

<It is the Backwoods Of Wherever and a group of young tourists have arrived at Backwoods Of Wherever Lake in their camper van, only to encounter a creepy old man on the shore as they set up camp>
CREEPY OLD MAN <in exaggerated yokel accent>: Arrr, be ye setting up camp, then?  Here at Backwoods Of Wherever Lake?
MUSCLED JOCK <raising one eyebrow a la Spock>: All the evidence - camper van, campers, tents, campfire - would suggest so.  
BOUFFANT BLONDE: Are you some random local colour or do you greet all campers thus?
SPECTACLED NERD: Hey, Josh, I'm just going to test fire the M16s into the lake.  Don't worry if you hear gunfire, old-timer.
CREEPY OLD MAN: Guns!  Shootin' inter the lake!
BLACK GUY <smoking a pipe>: Why, surely, old chap - ballistics and probability mean any ricochets merely carry on over water without inflicting any collateral injury or property damage.
CREEPY OLD MAN: Eh?
MUSCLED JOCK:  Sorry, in plain English, it's the safest way.  That Tarquin - swallowed a dictionary!
CREEPY OLD MAN: But - but - ye'll stir up the monster!
ALL SIX CAMPERS TOGETHER: The Monster?!
CREEPY OLD MAN: Aye, the monster!  The Monster of Back Of Wherever Lake!
ASIAN GIRL: The Monster Of Back Of Wherever Lake?
<this goes on, annoyingly, for several minutes, as the screenwriters try to pad the running time>

Perhaps the lake in question

BOUFFANT BLOND: So, you say nobody's ever actually seen this monster?
CREEPY OLD MAN: Nay, nay, lass - to see it is to die.
CHUBBY BOY WITH GLASSES: And there's only one?
CREEPY OLD MAN <chuckles sinisterly>: One's enough
CHUBBY BOY WITH GLASSES: And how long's it been terrorising the lake?
CREEPY OLD MAN: Thousands of years! At least.  The Kickapoo have legends of it -

They do indeed

CHUBBY BOY WITH GLASSES: So this one creature has been around for millenia.  And nobody's ever seen it.  Incredibly-long lived and amazingly shy, is that it?
CREEPY OLD MAN:  Why - you don't believe me?  Old Hank Connors, he went out on the lake in a storm just last year - never seen again.
ALL SIX CAMPERS TOGETHER: In a storm?
CREEPY OLD MAN: And Bart "Moonshine" Hutchence, lived on the shoreline.  Vanished completely.  Left nothing but a shack full of empties.
CHUBBY BOY WITH GLASSES: Has anyone undertaken a DNA sampling of the water table?  Echo-sounded the lake? Used motion-triggered cameras? Assayed fish stocks?
CREEPY OLD MAN: Eh? 
BOUFFANT BLOND: What he means is, has there been any scientific testing of the legend whatsoever, to establish an environmental baseline?
CREEPY OLD MAN: Eh? <in an undertone "I'm having a word with my agent later>
MUSCLED JOCK: So, apart from random disappearances clearly explicable as chance, there's no evidence at all?
CREEPY OLD MAN: There - there is - here - the Kickapoo Legend!  I got a cutting here in mah wallet - see?
BLACK CHAP: Allow me, I'm fluent in eighty seven Native American languages - oh I say! <chortles>
ALL FIVE CAMPERS AND CREEPY OLD MAN: What does it say?
BLACK FELLER: I'm paraphrasing a little, here, you understand - "You've been pranked white man ho ho ho"

Deadpan Kickapoo humorists

     And with that wordy pastiche (who says we need an editor), we are done done done!




*  Five of them.
**  Also - "KING of beers"?  In a self-proclaimed republic?
***  Do you see what I - O you do