So Much For Good Intentions

"O Look", I Told Myself, "It's Only 21:30"
Or 'Half Past Nine' in Proper Language.  "Why, there's ages yet before we need to bother about creating <ahem> Words Of Wit, Wisdom And Wonder," Conrad mused.  You know, BOOJUM! as you are reading it*.
     Well, sadly, no.  For what comes of slacking-off with a deadline?  Ah yes, poking around on the Internet "In the interests of research*".
    <hangs head in shameful manner>
    I have, gentle reader, thus commented on a variety of Youtube channels, and Facebook.  The former about the Sterling sub-machine gun - of which more later - and in the latter some political commentary that we simply cannot replicate here.  Although - although -
     - look, they are frankly not flattering to the South Canadian's incumbent.  That is as far as I dare go, given that BOOJUM!s remit is to stay very, very far away from Politics. 

An incucumber.  Close enough.

And also Lithium Wafer Battery Design.  Did I mention my 5,000 word monograph about "Forbidden Planet"?
     And here we are at 23:23, not a lot further forward.
     Okay!  Let us look firmly forward by looking firmly backwards, and here we take up the studio system from before the Second Unpleasantness, for I wish to discuss Olivia De Havilland back when she was Young And Hot.  Art?

Pretty Rowr.

     Back then - calm down, Art!  Think of Mara Corday - back then the Hollywood studios were immensely powerful and dictated what actors and actresses could do, and when, and how, and tellingly for how long.  A contract could last for years and years, with the studios, not the actors, deciding what films they would appear in, and the threat of being sent to the Hollywood Penal Colony on the Moon if they misbehaved**.
     Now, I know what you're thinking -

A Mozzie

     Yes, she was a relative of Geoffrey De Havilland, designer of that awesome multi-role combat aircraft the Mosquito, the terror of the Luftwaffe.  Small world, hmmmm?
     One morning young Olivia wakes up, rolls out of bed and decides that she's had enough: she is going to take on the studio system, but First! she needs a nutritious bowl of porridge**.  She then beat Jack Warner senseless in a ju-jitsu deathmatch** and so impressed the Supreme Court that they found in her favour, and all was love and roses thereafter.  Actually, she had been threatened with never working in Hollywood again, whether she smacked down or not; she did, though but only after flying 73 combat missions over Germany**.

Olivia and sis.  They did not get on.

     O and she won an Oscar and shizzle and was in "Gone With The Wind" (shades of Mosquitoes there!) for those of you interested in that kind of thing.  Which I'm not, so that's all you're getting.

Conrad: A Beacon Of Truthfullness And Honesty**
Well, sometimes.  I do worry so when I post gloasting articles about completing a codeword or cryptic crossword that you won't believe me, and slyly nudge each other with a knowing wink that says "O Rly?"
     So!  I thought it might be instructive to post a set of photos as I tackled the Skeleton in last week's "Oldham Times" and prove to you that I don't cheat.  Art!

     As you can see, I put "ZEBRA" when it should have been "PANDA", and "EMIGRANT" when it should have been "EMIGRE", two mistakes that wouldn't have happened if I'd been cheating.  What helps is that there's a line of symmetry from top port to bottom starboard, so you can mirror the squares already filled in.
     Still, not easy.  So I feel a sense of intellectual achievement.

Last Week's Brew
I don't think I put up a picture of the beer bottle I got last week, which is shockingly remiss of me and I shall amend this omission right now.  Art?

     This, I think, is a little closer to the English Civil Unpleasantness as a theme than the "1692", which is closer to the Enlightenment than Crommy.
     "Why so?" I hear you ask.  Well, because of these - Art?

A big gun

     In what eventually became the Royal Artillery, your average trooper is known as a "Bombardier", because he ladles explosive evil upon his opponents.

More From Our Slavic Chums

Or, you can put the "Slav" in "Slave" but you can't make him behave.  As detailed in Adam Tooze's excellent "The Wages of Destruction", the Nazi economy used large numbers of slave workers, or dragooned workers in other lands to produce Teuton weapons.  That this was a short-sighted policy is immediately obvious; you cannot expect Frenchmen to bust their bottoms building panzers for their hated occupiers.

     There were other, creative ways of getting back at the Teutons.  Peter Caddick-Adams, in his three-inch thick (and that's paperback) "Sand And Steel" recounts the story of a B17, hit repeatedly by flak shells that mysteriously didn't explode.  Once safely back at base, the flak shells lodged in the wings were taken apart and found to have no explosive filling; they did, however, have a carefully-written note in Czech, which stated "This is all we can do for you now".
     O Marketa!  That's your countrymen taking a chance - if the Teutons even suspected their ammunition was being sabotaged, they'd have hung people left, right and centre, pour encourager les autres.

Finally -

Your Humble Scribe is having to wing it a bit this afternoon, as Blogger has finally made the change they were threatening in June, so I'm having to see what's changed and what's not, in the middle of a post that was begun under the old model and is going to finish under the new.  So far it looks cosmetic only, apart from pictures - changing size isn't as straightforward, and I'm not sure how to add captions.

     O well.  These things are sent to try us.

Here's a werepig.  Just because.

*  "Waffle" comes in a late fourth
**  Some of this may be exaggerated.