Yo Ho Ho And A Lottle Of Scum

Aaaand No, Trebuchet Is Unavailable
Not only that, the <large loud swear pronounced here> extra line breaks are back in.  Do I have to shut down completely, log out of Blogger and then log back in again to get better functionality?  Because I can't be bothered.  We'll go with what we've got.
     For Lo! we are back on the piratical career of Prince Rupert of the Rhine, ex-cavalryman turned pirate.  Art?

Appropriately nautical

     Ol' Rupe's cunning plan was to use the small squadron of ships he had to capture English ships, then sell the cargoes and ships, or have them join his squadron.  We have seen how this did not go down well at all with the English, and the Irish town of Wexford, which Rupert had used as a base, was besieged and sacked.  Ol' Rupe had left by this time and ended at Lisbon in Portugal, where he was well-received by the Portuguese court.
     At first.

Lisbon, seventeenth century style

     Rupert's piratical shenanigans had brought the English navy a-chasing him.  Now they'd found him, they wanted the Portuguese king to hand him over, which the King bravely refused to do, until the perfidious English started to blockade Lisbon.  They also helped themselves to the cargoes aboard any Portuguese ship they happened to fancy the look of, which - no!  No, that certainly wasn't piracy, it was - er - it was - okay, it was piracy but they started it first.
     Eventually, much to the relief of the Porks, Rupert and his pocket fleet escaped to sea before heading along the coast and then escaping altogether before heading to the Azores.
     "What can possibly go wrong now!" crowed Ol' Rupe.
     You had to ask, didn't you?
     Motley, I hunger - bring me something pickled in brine!

No - "Brine" not "Rhine"!  You're as bad as Art.

What I Did With My Lunchtime
Or, why yesterday's blog was 50 words short of the Compositional Ton.  Normally I'd be finishing it off with frantic, even frenzied, typing over lunch, trying to scoff pickled gherkins (in vinegar, not brine, in case you were interested), dip crudites into hummus and type, all at once.
     Not yesterday!
     For I had arranged to meet up with the lovely Anna, whom we first encountered eight years ago whilst working at the Co-Op, except she was blonde then.  Art?

     She vetted this one as being acceptable, so it's okay to have it on public display.  Because I don't trust any of you scoundrels and rapscallions, you're not getting her last name.
     We have communicated over social media since Lockdown began, of course, which really doesn't have the intimacy of real-time conversation.  In fact we must have blathered for about 45 minutes and were slightly shocked to see we had 10 minutes to finish the meal and get back to work, which takes 5 minutes.
     It was a tonic to see her again, the food was different ("Pho" in the Corn Exchange" and it was rather cheap.
     The only down bit was no hugging, so we made do with bumping elbows.

Pho to the outside world

Russian Food
Okay, okay, I confess I've still not made Syrniki, with the proviso "Yet".
     Other food facts that Sergei covered on his Youtube channel concerned "Ujin", which is Russian for "Dinner", so if there are any martial arts devotees in the Tsardom of Putin, then they might be having ujin in a doujin.
     Moving swiftly on, Sergei explained about "Tvorog" (I think the "V" is silent).  This is another type of Ruffian cheese, their version of the West's cottage cheese.  Art?

The article in question

     Sergei was shocked at the hideous Western practice of putting sweet things on tvorog, as to him it should only ever be eaten as a savoury.  Conrad can only nod in rueful agreement, as to him, porridge should only ever be eaten with salt, and let me say ONLY EVER EATEN WITH SALT. Those who add <shudder> things like strawberries or banana are accelerating the decline of Western civilisation.

     Righto, I am now typing this in the older Blogger iteration because I'm at work, and all the new one brings up when you look at a Draft is a page full of HTML coding, which means oodles to the cleverer of you out there, but which conveys 0.0% to Conrad <The Dinosaur - the hideous truth courtesy Mister Hand> and so here we go.


Do we have Trebuchet?  I think we do, so here goes …

"Rolling Stone"'s 50 Greatest Television Sci-Fi Series Of All Time
A dangerous assertion, Ol' Roll, because time and television series do not stand still.  Take the example of "The Boys" - which may come up later in this list - actually I'll shut up right now*.
     Okay, Number 13 is "Buffy The Vampire Slayer", and they - O hang on, Art?

     I think the bloke standing behind Michelle Gellar is Joss Wheedon, the series' creator.
     Your Humble Scribe would tend to jib at calling this show "sci-Fi", as I did with "Wynona Earp". BTVS was more in the line of supernatural and horror than sci-fi, although it did feature the occasional trope-friendly robot or such.  Whatever it's definitive ilk, it certainly had something going for it, because it was around for seven seasons, which is a surpassingly long time for a show with such a thin premise ("There are vampires.  She kills them").
     Conrad has seen some episodes in passing and it's not really his cup of tea (loose-leaf Darjeeling no milk or sugar, ta very much); I prefer the spin-off series "Angel".
    

     Then there is the setting of "Sunnydale", surely the most inappropriately-named town in the whole of South Canada, since it is beset on a weekly basis by hordes of supernatural monsters.  The series' creators try to grandfather this by asserting Sunnydale sits on a "Hellmouth", which seems to vomit forth said monsters.  Really, you'd think someone would have bricked it up by now - property values might fall otherwise!
     O - it was pleasant to see an English character actor going against type as a hero, too (we shall gloss over Spike).

Finally -
And we have hit the Compositional Ton.  I did worry, all I got earlier on trying to access Posts was the spinning circle of death.
     Okay, now to look up the origins of that phrase "They know their onions", because Conrad is not only a blogger but also a curious rascal <and a dinosaur! the hideous truth courtesy Mister Hand>  dammit didn't get that full stop in quickly enough.

     Catch you in a while, gavial




*  I stuck a full stop there to stop Mister Hand from interfering again, the dirty cur.