Ah, The Youth Of Today ...
They think they're so anti-authority and rebellious, with their grimy music and ripped-hop (spelling? as dislike both and am unfamiliar), wearing rebel trainers, not wiping their rebel feet when entering the home, and leaving dirty dishes piled up in the sink.
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| SMASHING THE SYSTEM, DAD! |
Well, Ha! <snaps fingers loudly>. As Spike Milligan said in one of his books (probably "Adolf Hitler: My Part In His Downfall"), back in the Twenties and Thirties, The Establishment looked upon jazz as a combination of black magic, punk rock fifty years ahead of it's time, and the incipient end of Empire. Art?
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| Spike to starboard |
I well remember a description of jazz by an horrified clergyman in the Thirties, which was, "A cannibalistic rhythm orgy, leading our jitterbug youth down the primrose path to hell".
One wonders if he lived long enough to witness The Sex Pistols. Anyway, I thought it would be appropriate if we substituted "Jig-gerbug" in that statement, for Lo! I've been neglecting the wargames table in order to tackle more jigsaw puzzle. Art?
Crawling slowly to completion. You will, of course - obviously! - get regular updates as we inexorably close in on 100%. Or, given that missing edge piece, 99.99%.
Motley! I feel the need - the need for mead - go pour me a glass!
Schadenfreude, Thy Name Is First Bus
<rubs hands and cackles> From my window seat I get a glimpse of every First Bus that goes past, and so noticed one that stopped right outside my window. This is unusual, as the bus stop is a good twenty yards away; though the bus drivers occasionally drop people off at this point if they've driven past the bus stop in a fit of stupidity.
Nope, this one stayed there a while before unloading all it's passengers, who trooped to the bus stop and caught the next 409. I can't lip read but they weren't happy.
Hours later a monster towing vehicle showed up and took it's own sweet time to hitch up the bus, so I popped down to get a picture to laugh at later. Art?
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| Point and laugh |
You're Not Getting Off That Lightly
I did mention the Battle of Worcester on Saturday, which was fought on the 3rd of September 1651, so we're almost at the anniversary. I couldn't wait another day. Sorry about that. Art?
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| This'll give you an idea |
Unusually for him, and very menacingly for his opponents, Cromwell well outnumbered the largely Scottish army that Charles II led - 28,000 to 16,000. He split his forces into three and moved on the Royalists who had drawn themselves up outside the city, from west, south and east. There was fierce fighting at first until Charles led two attacks out of the city against the Parliamentarians, having seen what he thought was an opportunity. It wasn't. Crommy immediately intervened, experience and numbers told and the Royalist army was utterly routed. Charles fled on horseback and would not return to England until 1660. His English levies melted away back to where they had come from. The Scots couldn't do so, as they revealed who they were as soon as they spoke. Only a few dozen got back to Scotland, leaving 10,000 prisoners, many of whom were sent into serfdom in the colonies. Art?
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| Chas being a teensy bit optimistic |
It's hard to over-estimate the importance of this victory. Once again, an entire Scottish army had been smashed, and the pretender king forced to flee into exile again. Invading England at the head of a foreign army had immediately put most of the country against him and Chas had to wait until long after Crommy was dead before daring to return.
Here endeth the history lesson for today.
The Loons, The Loons, They Should Be Beaten With Spoons
We don't want to face murder charges, after all. I finished a recent blog with a picture of HAARP, the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, which has long been a particular bete noir of the swivel-eyed conspiracy loonwaffles. Art?
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| 1,000 yards square and with 180 antennae |
This is HAARP's principal instrumentation, designed to fiddle about with the very upper atmosphere and to find out how the ionosphere works.
Along came the loonwaffles, who accuse it of weather-control, earthquake-triggering, mind control, magnetic pole flipping, setting the sky on fire, and probably moving people's furniture secretly at night so they stub their toes in the morning. The fact that none of these things are remotely practical or possible has not stopped them from frothing with righteous hatred.
One would suspect that, if HAARP were able to control minds, there would be exactly zero conspiracy theories about it - but of course logic and joined-up thinking has never been a loonwaffle strong point.
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| "I have a tinfoil hat - and so does my cat!" Yeah, buddy, but with a face like that, not for long. |
Bendis Recommends
Going back to the list that Brian M. Bendis recommended <wallet squeaks in fear>, we come to "Once And Future". Conrad should emphasise that he's got absolutely NO idea what these titles constitute in terms of plot nor artwork; yet one is always interested to read what someone whose business is creating comics thinks of the rest of the field. So - Art?
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| The artwork impresses. Always a good start. |
And the story? Apparently some "Nationalists" (probably those numpties Britain First) conjure up a mythical mystic monster from Arthurian legend, which brings retired monster-hunter Bridget McGuire and her grandson onto the scene. This sounds interesting! A mash-up of Arthurian and modern and British monsters (we have a lot of these in our past). Count me in! <wallet squeaks in abject terror>.
Finally -
We are technically okay, as we've hit the Compositional Ton. However, just waving and walking away didn't seem very generous. What can we have as a nice short article?
O! I know - the Klein Bottle. Art?
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| Not just little |
This peculiar object is a kind of 3D Moebius strip, as the topologists state it has no boundaries, and all sorts of other properties, it being a one-dimensional surface that vectors into pocket universes where - no, sorry, wrong anecdote. Art?
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| The theoretical version |
One is supposed to be able to traverse a Klein bottle from any one point and back to where you started, except by that point you'll be upside down. One has to wonder if the visionary artist M.C. Escher ever mucked about with these?
And with that, we are not only done, we've come back to having a Cannibalistic Rhythm Orgy!
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