The Stupid! It Spreads!

Yes, Vulnavia, We Are On About The FiveGees Again
I've not insulted them for a few weeks, so I went back and looked up exactly what those Five Gees stand for, and it was: Grotesquely Gullible Garbage-Guzzling Gits.  By an amazing coincidence this can be expressed as 5Gs, which is the technology they are all prating about.  "5G causes brain cancer", "5G kills puppies", "5G is spyware for the Bilderberg Group" are some of their more coherent assertions.

Five gees

     This, gentle reader, is the consequence of getting your <ahem> facts from social media, because a pasty-skinned, tinfoil hat-wearing teenager living in the basement on a diet of Twinkies, energy drinks and pizza is, of course, far better informed that ignorant scientists or journalists.
     That was irony.

So is this!

      One wonders what these dipsticks will do when, in the fullness of time, 5G becomes obsolete and we move onto 6G*.  Probably sell their homes and go live in a wooden hut atop a hill somewhere, taking a lifetime's supply of tinfoil with them.
     And that mention of it spreading ... Art?

     "Ancient Magic Diploma" indeed!  Here's the thing about magic - it doesn't work.  Sorry to burst your bubble and render your life a meaningless husk, but there it is.  The course title is a little ambiguous, too, because are you being inculcated (ha yes another word you never expected to read today) into the practicing of magic, or is this merely the study of ancient magic?  Because if the former, you can expect to see a whole lot of Fivegees signing up for it.
     Motley, I'm glad you've got your scuba gear on, because I've drained the swimming pool and had it refilled with liquid mercury, so -

Hieromancy
Whilst on about ancient magic, I made a note of this word in my book of notes**.
     It refers to a specific type of divination, interpreting sacrificial objects for an outcome, and you can most appositely see this in any work of Hellenic history where they poke around in the entrails of a goat.

"Stir five times clockwise with a copper spoon ..."

      Conrad suspects that there must have been a list of possible ways for a goat's entrails to look, and that this corresponds with predicted outcomes.
     For example:

INTESTINES FULL OF DIGESTED FOOD: Today is a good day to commit to that thing you were wondering about before, you should really go for it.  There will be rain Tuesday.  And yes, your wife is having an affair with your neighbour's son.
STOMACH IS DISTENDED: Today is a bad day to commit to that thing you were wondering about before, you should really avoid it.  A minor earth-tremor will happen on Saturday.  And the Persians will be invading Sunday.
UNDERSIZED LIVER:  Today is a kind of meh day for that thing you were wondering about before, take it or leave it.  One of your horses is sick.  Plague due at the weekend.

     A little facetious, admittedly, but it does make sense, doesn't it?

Cheiromancy
Not the same thing at all, because this is palm-reading by another name, trying to sound more impressive.

Art, are you being - satirical?

     Not the right image, Art, however reading these fronds would be just as effective as the lines on your hand.  Free will versus predestination! and if your future is predicted, won't that potentially affect it, as per Heisenberg? (and "Odyssey 7").

Chirurgy
I know, I know, it sounds like a debauched party of palm-readers, doesn't it?
     Well it's not.  If you looked at the rolls for a regiment of soldierly during the English Civil Unpleasantness, you would find an entry for "Chirurgion", and he had nothing to do with the River Chir, which is a thousand miles away on the steppes of Mother Russia.
     He was the regimental surgeon, carrying out chirurgy, and received the handsome recompense of £5 per month, which, whilst it was more than the wagon-master, was less than the Quartermaster or Provost.

Seventeenth century surgical tools

     Just imagine, no anaesthetics, no analgesics (bar a draught of rum) and no concept of hygiene or sepsis.  What fun it must have been!  You can picture the screams already.

<A tent after the battle, where a soldier shot in the leg has been put on a table>
CHIRURGION: Oooh, that looks nasty.  Better have the whole leg off.
SOLDIER: What?  It's only a graze!
CHIRURGION: Ah, yes, them's the worst kind.  All sprightly one day, dancing a jig, and the next day <pauses for effect> DEAD!
SOLDIER <gets up and walks around>: See?  I don't need - ah.
CHIRURGION:  Oh, you noticed my tools?
SOLDIER: There - there's an awful lot of saws there.
CHIRURGION: Oh, pshaw!  We use some for cutting up firewood.
SOLDIER: Er - won't that make them blunt?
CHIRURGION: Well, we try not to mix them up.  Come on, back on the table.
SOLDIER: "Try"?
CHIRURGION: Have some Magic Sleeping Potion -
<soldier takes a swig as the Chirurgion's Mate comes up behind him and flattens him with a stout club>
CHIRURGION'S MATE: Sorry, sir, the whetstone's still not fixed, so I couldn't sharpen any blades.
CHIRURGION: Oh drat.  Still, never mind, it's not us who gets their leg sawn off, heh?
CHIRURGION'S MATE: Another happy customer.

"Quickly!  More Magic Sleeping Potion!"

Finally -
There was a bit of remembrance on teh Interwebz recently, in commemoration of Earl Cameron, a black actor from Bermuda, who died recently.  He kind of fell into acting by accident, seeing as how he ended up in This Sceptred Isle just before the Second Unpleasantness broke out as a merchant seaman, who missed his ship on account of a woman.  One thing that everyone quoted was how he was in "Doctor Who" (the BBC's premier dramamentary!), which Conrad didn't recall.  Art?


     Earl played an astronaut in "The Tenth Planet", which is unfortunate because the last episode of it not has survived, and I think he and his fellow astronaut come to a sticky end.  I might dig the DVD out and play it, you know - that's the sort of madcap thing I do now and then!

Toodleoo¬

*  Conrad knows nothing and cares less about mobile phones, so he's not even sure if this "6G" thing is possible.  We'll assume it is.
**  O if only there were a more convenient way to describe a book of notes.