Dithyrambunctious

If That Ever Gets Into The Collins Concise, I Want A Payment

For I have created a new word.  Granted, it's of very limited application; yet how many of you out there can claim to have enriched the English language recently?

     For Lo! we are back to reviewing the Greco-Italian conflict of 1940, where the plan had been for the mighty Fascist legions to steamroller over the effete Hellenics and <Mussolini's fantasy world redacted>.  In painful reality, the Italians had been pushed back into Albania, from whence they had come. Art?

The Greco-Albanian border.  Terrain not conducive to rolling of any kind.

     By the time early 1941 rolled around, the Greeks were running perilously short of things, as a result of which they were petitioning Perfidious Albion for help with military kit. Just kit; for the Greeks rightly feared that if soldiers in British battledress turned up, they wouldn't turn up in enough strength to prevent the Teutons from intervening.  And the Teutons would intervene; Herr Schickelgruber feared another Salonika if the pawky and detested British came and got comfy in Greece.  Why, they might interfere with his plans to double-cross, betray and stab in the back his bestest mate, Ol' Joe Stalin!

The Brits: always looking to crash someone else's party

     Things played out as they usually did in the early part of the war, with the British managing a highly-skilled withdrawal/unabashed skedaddle/sorry-got-another-appointment elsewhere <delete where applicable>, to Crete.  

     What benefits the Teutons and Italians got out of their Greek occupation is questionable, since the mountains seethed with brigands, bandits and - British! who were ever ready to stir things up with supplies of gold and guns.  The debate as to whether the Teuton's invasion of Greece significantly delayed their assault on the Sinister Union rages to this day.

     And a "Dithyramb"?  A forceful and passionate classical form of hymn to Dionysus, that chap the ancient Greeks venerated quite a bit.  You know, the god of wine, which was consumed in large amounts in toasts to the gallant Hellenic mountain troops*.

Dithyrambling on

     I regret to say the Motley will not be joining us this afternoon.  It's feeling a bit flat**.


With Indecent Haste -

We are back to "Rolling Stone"'s Top 50 Television Sci-Fi shows, and at Number 5 stands an entry I've not seen one bit of: The Mandalorian.  Art?

Ooooh, on dodgy ground there

     This is, by all accounts, quite good, in the sense that it's a straightforward action thriller that honours the original vision of George Lucas, with added Baby Yoda for that Awwww effect.  Even The Critical Drinker likes it, so they must be doing something right.  Maybe I'll get around to watching it once my Book Mountain has diminished a little.  And just imagine it all came from a little film called "Swingers" all those years ago <checks how old "Swingers" is, gags> yes all 24 of them.

CAUTION!  Fistbumps will not change a nappy

     One reason for it's success is cheapness: they use a state-of-the-art curved background screen that takes projections in order to replicate the great outdoors, or the great indoors, or the belly of the whale, or a whale of a belly - You get the idea.  So Jon Favreau can have The Mandalorian striding across the Iridium Salt Sands of Klacto Sedsteen V, convincingly, whereas in reality it's a studio set.

The Eddystone Lighthouse

We come to Number Four of these hallowed erecti artefacts, put up in place of the old eighteenth century one, which tended to wallow a bit when big waves hit it, as the rocks on which it stood were rather eroded.  No mean feat, putting up a four and a half-thousand ton structure on rocks only free of sea for three hours per day.  The base of the old lighthouse remains, because it was too well-built to dismantle; quality workmanship, that is, lads, quality workmanship.  Art?

  The "new" lighthouse went into operation in 1882, and is still working.  Again, that's sheer craftsmanship, Vulnavia.  How many of our modern gimcrack buildings will still exist in 2140, let alone still be functional?

     This fourth model has an obvious refinement: a towertop helipad, which allows easy access even if the seas are bad.  Said access would only be for maintenance, repair or replacement as all British lighthouses are automated, monitored by Trinity House Headquarters in London.

     There!  Now we can move on to the Wolf Rock lighthouse, just not today.

My Mate Listy ...

Actually I'm speaking out of turn, we barely know each other and have never met, and my claim to familiarity comes from reading his excellent blog and purchasing one of his books (there will be others, mind).  Let's put up a link.  

http://overlord-wot.blogspot.com/

     There you go, Listy.  He does proper research, you know, going out and digging through files and papers and records, instead of Conrad the keyboard querier, which has led to some perfect gems on his blog.  This latest one being a case in point: plastic armour.

     No, I'm not going to blather on at length about it.  If you wish to read more about this remarkable discovery of the Second Unpleasantness, go check out his blog.   I will put up a picture or two, if Art can be persuaded to leave his delicious coke-and-anthracite salad.

     This 'armour' was a blend of tar, cork, stone chippings and limestone and O Boy! was it effective.  A 3/4 inch panel of plastic armour would stop anything up to and including 20 m.m. cannon shells.  Bullets?  It laughed at them.  Grenades?  A similar sneer.  Bomb and shell splinters? Get out of here!  Not only was it highly effective, it was a heck of a lot cheaper than armour plate, being only 1/8th the cost, and it could be easily and quickly manufactured.

     There's more, which I will save for a later date.  Meanwhile - go support Listy!

The deadly dangerous Armoured Shed, Static Version

Finally - 

Let's have a short but gruesome finale, and a genuine Darwin Award winner.

     Our soon-to-be-deceased protagonist was snowboarding with friends in Mount Batchelor's ski resort when evening came.  Disdaining a lift back to town, he instead dossed down in a sleeping bag on the surface of the resort's car park.

The picture-postcardy resort.

     Early next morning a resort worker arrived with a snow removal machine, and set to with a will.  Let's hope our DA winner had also made out a will, because the machine rolled right over him and killed him stone dead.  The worker didn't see any tents or cars in the car park nor beyond and thus had no clue there was somebody lying asleep in the car park.

     There's a great bit of understatement in the press: "It took some time for authorities to identify S*****."  I'll bet it did!  One also wonders that the noise of a large piece of electro-mechanical machinery, driven by an internal-combustion engine, did not wake our sleeping beauty.

     And with that we are done!

*  Quite possibly.

**  This is what comes of losing at Downhill Boulder Racing

Dr. Nostradamus Ate My Hamster

This Is By Way Of A Notification

Your Humble Scribe has today finished reading the novel named in today's title.  Or, perhaps I should clarify: I have just finished reading "Nostradamus Ate My Hamster".  

More Frank Kelly Freas, just because

I read "Dr. No" ages ago and still give a horrified laugh at how the evil doctor of the title gets his come-uppance -

"Frying tonight!"

     Compared to the novel, the film termination is positively clinical.  Nope, not going to go into any more details than that.  NAMH features neither Nostradamus nor hamster, though being Robert Rankin it does have sprouts, and Brentford. 

Surprise! Not in the book.  At all.

 The novel was a quick read and doesn't involve tortured protagonists with character flaws agonising over their inner demons (Stephen King, looking at you and the Overlook Hotel).

     So, what can Conrad pick to read now? I hear you ask.  Well, I've gone through the - what's that?  You didn't ask anything?  O.  Someone did <checks under bed, behind curtains and in wardrobe> hmmmmm a body, a ventriloquist's dummy and a skeleton - nothing out of the ordinary.  Art!

     Yes, Charles Dickens' "Bleak House" which, with the explanatory essay at the back, comes to 940 pages.  Two and a half inches thick, and there is the evidence for you mewling sceptics.  Conrad knows very little of the novel, unless he's read it already many years ago and his failing memory cannot bring anything to mind.  There is an element of the murder mystery about it, and Conrad wonders if all the relevant clues will be placed before the reader, or whether the killer's revelation on page 939 will be something of a deus ex machina.  We shall see!

A very bleak house

     This information, I feel sure, will help to elevate my profile into that of an intellectual wannabe-pseud! <the brutal truth courtesy Mister Hand> as reading stuff about zombies and time-travelling Nazis might have taken the shine off my reputation a tad.

     Motley!  You get a fifty yard head start, then I start rolling the boulders and you're not safe until the stream at valley bottom, only fifteen hundred yards distant*.

Back To Greece And A Tumult In The Clouds

On 28/10/2020 we referred to a Greek national commemorative event, "Ochi Day", where the Italians were told where to go by the Greek Prime Minister, after they had demanded free passage into and through Greece.

Greek border customs agents welcome the foreign tourists

     Before this occurred what happened was pretty predictable, up to a point, if you knew how the Axis dictators behaved.  The Italians bombed various Greek ships whilst denying all knowledge of what was happening, with the Greek government pretending that it didn't know what was going on either, as they tried to mobilise without actually admitting it or letting it slip to the Italians.  Well done Italians! for the Greek people were not fooled at all by these prevarications; indeed, a fractious and politically-divided nation immediately rallied round the flag.  Art?

     The crunch came in October 1940, when the Italians invaded Greece from Albania.  They had a much larger and better-equipped and armed army than the Greeks, with an air force that completely eclipsed the Hellenic one, not to mention a far larger and more modern navy.  They should have rolled over the gallant defenders -

     However - and you must have known that was coming - the Greeks fought back bitterly, operative word here being "bitter" as this was winter warfare conducted in mountains.  Local knowledge, raw courage and being familiar with snow at height neutralised the Italian's military advantages.  In fact, the Greeks (perhaps we should be writing "The Grrrrreeks"?) actually pushed their detested opponents back into Albania.  Art?

What happens when you push Greek hospitality too far

     I bet you never knew all these shenanigans went on over in the Balkans at this time, did you?  And we're not done yet!

O alright.  Dr. No is simultaneously crushed and suffocated when Our James gets to the controls of a cargo derrick and drops a ton of bird droppings on the bad guy, that was being quarried and loaded onto ships to make money (apprentice world dictators need deep pockets, you know).  The evil villain probably had enough time to chortle at the irony of being killed by bird droppings, better known as "GuaNo".  Heh.

It will, indeed, be a good year for the roses.

Wolf Rock

No!  Not some dodgy Eighties South Canadian hideous hybrid television show, about cops who are werewolves and who break into song four times per program.

     Here an aside.  There really was a cop show where they did, indeed, break out into song and dance, and it was called "Cop Rock".  Conrad is also certain he's read about another cop show where they were all werewolves, but cannot find confirmation of it on teh interwebz and is reluctant to dig through endless copies of "Starburst" to find the article.

A brief moment of still, silent sanity

     We have a bit of ambiguity about this post, since Your Humble Scribe acquired a bottle of beer about six weeks ago for this very reason.  Art?

     And as Your Modest Artisan also hoped, there just so happens to be a lighthouse perched upon the Wolf Rock, out between Land's End and the Scilly Isles.  Yes, I know we've still not gone into the Fourth Eddystone Rocks Lighthouse but who has ever accused BOOJUM! of being linear, logical or sensible**?  

     The rock made a howling sound when winds passed over it, prior to the installation of a lighthouse, which makes Conrad wonder when wolves were wiped out in this Sceptred Isle, as how else would one know what kind of noise they made?

     <one quick Google later>

     Hmmm, it looks like the end of the seventeenth century, so we can allow that people sailing past the Wolf Rock would really have been able to compare the two.  I'm so glad we got that out of the way!

     We don't have time to go into the whole story of the Wolf Rock Light, as there is quite a preamble to the tower's erection.  Check back at a later date - yes, yes, yes, after we've finished the story of the Eddystone Lighthouse <sighs at your pedantry>.

Finally -

I did find a web article that boxed in the outlines of how to create a Codeword puzzle, which is best done on graph paper, they say.  There were instructions on how to work out which words to include so you got all 26 letters of the alphabet, and pencilling in a layout, but the one thing they omitted is the most important one: how do you know which letters to give as clues?  HOW, I ASK YOU!

      I think I'm very cross as this omission though I'll give it twenty-four hours to make sure whether that's a yes or no.

Is Conrad angry or not?  Okay, first we must compare this to Schrodinger's Cat ...

     DONE!

*  In reality more like two thousand, I just don't like to dishearten folks.

** Vigdis Finsbogadottir did, but she doesn't count, as she's Icelandic

Slow Traffic Day

So I'm Not Bothering To Create Another Post

Instead you have to settle for a load of links to previous stuff, which I'm picking at random and as I feel like it.   SO!

    - O hang on a second, we need a click-bait image first, don't we?  Art?

By the inimitable Frank Kelly Freas

     This particular image was one of those in "Science Fiction Monthly"'s article about FKF, in case you're curious.  Okay, bait-clickery sorted, now for the links:

2015:

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2015/03/i-dont-have-trumpet-so-im-ringing-this.html

2017:

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2017/05/today-in-gomorrah-on-irwell.html

2015:

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2015/12/a-call-to-arms.html

2020:

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2020/02/still-pretty-annoyed.html

2014:

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2014/12/today-theme-is-spitfire.html

    And that's quite enough.  As The Critical Drinker likes to end , "Go away now!" in his trademark drunken slur, although we of course lack the drunken slurring (sober for October, doncha know).  Chin chin!

EPAMINONDAS!

Am I Sorry If That Sounds Like Shouting?

NO!
(This will all make sense lower down)

It could be the catchphrase of shouted Greek defiance, expressed by the band of patriots who assembled around Lord Byron as he sought to overthrow the Ottoman tyranny that had enslaved the cradle of Western civilisation (Greece - do keep up!).  "Epaminondas! Elliniki!"

Still very highly-thought of today

     Here an aside.  Byron was a success with the Greek rebels for the same reason that Lawrence was a success with the Arab rebels; he was an honest broker from outside the field, without any axe to grind, no loyalty to any particular faction, and he had lots of money.

Of course, you can't be a firebrand warrior all the time.  There has to be some relaxation ...

     Sadly, it's no cry of freedom <sad face> although it does concern ancient Greece <happier face> and battles of the Classical variety <big smiley face> which I may have to re-

     Hang on - October 28th is "Oxi Day"?  Excuse me, I was just having a look at a Greek website in English and they mention "Oxi Day".  Hang on, I'm composing this at night on the 28th of October, let me go back and add a bit of Hellenic colouring higher up.  "Oxi" is pronounced "Okhi" and is Greek for "No".  This day is celebrated as it was on this date in 1940 that Mussolini demanded Greece allow his Italian legions free passage across Greece, or else.  'Or else' being an euphemism for 'WAR".  The Greek Prime Minister, Metaxas, is alleged to have bluntly - even laconically* - replied "Oxi".

     Oops.

     If you poke the average Greek with a stick, his natural patriotism rises to the surface.  Metaxas, hitherto an unpopular dictator manifesting the trappings of democracy, became an instant hero as the streets filled with dancing Greeks, all fervently looking for Italians to wage war on.

     I think we'll have to come back to this, Your Humble Scribe kind of tripped over it by sheer coincidence.

     Back to Epaminondas.  Not a battle-cry, but a politician and soldier of Thebes, born circa 412 BC, who was absolutely spit-hot on the battlefield.  Let me see if there are any relevant illustrations in my recently rediscovered volume "Greece and Rome at War".

     Nope.  Sorry.  Let us try the WWW. Art!

The Battle of Leuctra

     Ol' Epi led the main body of the Thebans (blue) and his co-commander, Pelopidas, led the Sacred Band, a bunch of Theban hard nuts.  Epi had made careful note of the universal practice by generals of the day of having all your best troops on the right flank, with the left flank being composed of considerably feebler troops. So!   He had the Theban right flank nice and weak, whilst the left flank wasn't.  Art?

A rugby scrum with edged weapons

      In fact, rather than the usual 12 ranks deep, the Theban left flank was 50 deep, which meant it hit with tremendous shock effect and utterly overwhelmed the Spartans before it, killing a great many of them.  The remaining 'Spartan' forces were mostly unwilling allies bullied into supplying men for Sparta, who demonstrated how much they liked Sparta by retreating en masse.  This battle, Leuctra, marked the end of Sparta as a major power, and the training of, and planning for the Theban army and allies had all been done by Epaminondas.  So you could call him a bad-ass.

Just not to his face

     Motley!  Let's have a game of Angry Pike Juggling!

Another Look At Stupid

This time, the corporate and business community, which is stuffed full of supposedly smart people who nevertheless manage to also stuff, except we are talking both feet in their mouth simultaneously (presumably they were sitting down at the time).  We have covered the rapid decline of Schlitz when they decided that making money was preferable to making beer that was drinkable.  Now look at - Tumblr!  Art?

Have it acquired in a corporate take-over ...

     At it's height, Tumblr - what, can't corporate businessmen spell any more? - was a media platform that anyone could post anything on, and a great deal of that was NSFW stuff involving porn.  Censorship was non-existent, so people could (and did) discuss anything, probably up to and including Uncle Brian's Victorian Brass Faucet Collecting Blog**.
     They were valued at about £1 billion, or in longhand, £1,000,000,000, which made them a bit of a target for other companies looking to expand, and they were bought by Yahoo, which is nowadays a shadow of what it once was***.  Yahoo in it's turn was bought by Verizon, who threw up their hands in horror at what they'd acquired in Tumblr.  "None of that wicked pornography here!" they insisted, and refused to budge on this.  Thanks to this, and adverts, former users vanished by the hundred thousands every month.

Tumblrweed town today

     It was finally bought by Automattic (ANOTHER mis-spelling!) for the mighty sum of £2 million, proof of how low it's fortunes had fallen.  They won't allow NSFW content, either, which isn't really an issue any more as so few people use Tumblr.

     Which all goes to prove Conrad's assertion that nothing good will ever come of a brand name that IS NOT SPELLED CORRECTLY.

Back To That "Rolling Stone" Top 50 Sci-Fi Shows List

Number Six.

I see what they did there, because this entry is "The Prisoner", being both #6 on their list, and the name applied to Patrick McGoohan's character in the series.  Art?

Just another average day in The Village

     The series is supposedly about a secret agent who loudly declares his intention to retire, only to be abducted and wake up in The Village, a surreal place at an unknown location, where it's unclear who are prisoners and who are prison staff.  It covers all sorts of issues and goes far beyond the Sixties 'spy-fi' format, ending up with an ending that variously baffled or infuriated fans.

     Well worth a watch, and a killer theme tune, too.  Conrad recommends!

"Something's definitely off round here.  Can't quite put my finger on it ..."

Finally -

It's another dreary day in the Pond of Eden, with grey skies and grey rain falling on a grey landscape, in pur - O no sorry it's a green landscape, my glasses were steamed up thanks to the porridge - in pur of whatever, I've lost the thread now.  SO!  I may have to car it into Royton with a cargo (do you see wh - O you do) of books MY BEAUTIFUL BOOKS to deliver to one of the lucky, lucky charity shops.  One wonders what they will make of the "Index to Order of Battle of Divisions".

Baffled?

Chin chin!

*  I.e. terse of speech, after the denizens of Lacoonia, also known as "Spartans"

**  But not The Lovely Fluffy Bunnies Have Exciting Adventures; that would be going too far.

***  I.e. big and important and influential

Doctor Yes

Oho, I'm Quite Pleased With This One

Whether or not you are is immaterial, because once again, whose blog is it?

     The lead-in and background to this is that I have been a-listening to quite a bit of Yes recently, principally their iconic Seventies stuff.  Last week it was my first time listening to "Tales From Topographic Oceans".

     O my.  Art?

      From memory, I think it's a double album, back in the days when a vinyl record long-playing record could accommodate about 30 minutes per side, and each of the four (?) tracks is at least 20 minutes long.  One for the completists, I fear.

     Then it was onto "The Yes Album", which was their breakout album, and pretty good it is too.  This was the last record that Tony Kaye, their original keyboard player, was present on until a return in the Eighties.  Yes, Rick Wakeman came in after TK and no, he wasn't there from the start.  Art!

    This cover photo was from a hastily-cobbled together photo session.  Tony is the one with a plaster cast on his foot, something Your Humble Scribe wondered about at the time, and which wasn't explained in the music press as the story behind it was years old by the time Conrad acquired the album.

     What happened was that Yes's tour van was involved in a serious road accident late in 1970, where all were seriously shaken and Tony suffered a fracture in his foot, hence the plaster in the photo above, as it still had weeks to heal.  Conrad is unsure how he would manage the pedals on piano or Hammond organ.

     Anyway, that's the story behind today's title!  What, it has some satirical allusion to an obscure thriller film from the early Sixties?  Pshaw, you're making it up!

O.
(Cheap gag comment avoided)

     It is, of course, entirely possible that you are reading the title incorrectly from left to right, when it should be read vertically, and we ought to be going "Wow!" at "DN Ro"*.
     Motley, let us anticipate the forming of the Ministry of Permitting Dangerous Things and play Poisonous Paintball!  You can have curare and I think I'll take tetrodotoxin.

"Field Guns In France" By Colonel Fraser-Tytler

A very interesting memoir written by a Royal Artillery officer, consisting of letters he sent home during the First Unpleasantness, which are mostly free from boring technical details about azimuth and deflection and meteor reports and indenting for spare salad forks for the mess -

     He writes with a certain caustic wit, having a rather cynical attitude towards higher command, yet remaining technically competent in his job as Battery Commander and also quite dedicated to the pursuit of slaying the bally Hun**.

     He typically never mentions the original D.S.O. ("Distinguished Service Order") and only the bar (i.e. the same award again) as he is told off for not wearing it by his CO.

     Your Humble Scribe guessed he was an Old Etonian as he always mentions bumping into other Etonians in the front lines or when ambling around the rear, and he was definitely a hunting, shooting and fishing chap, too.  There is mention of his pike-angling gear in an especially ghoulish fashion (attempting to 'reel in' the corpse of a dead Teuton pilot lying out in No Man's Land), and lots of stuff about 'stalking' which in those days meant sneaking up on wild game in order to shoot it, rather than being a sex-pest.

TYT was in charge of six of these

     He draws comparison with how little kit the battery arrived with in France in late 1915, when all their worldly goods were carried on a single cart.  When they came to quit their positions on the Somme they needed eight carts to carry away all their kit (some of it blatantly stolen), including wing chairs and a plush red couch for the Major's HQ.
     Conrad feels a nagging need to annotate the whole book.  I know, I know, I've got 1,160 Canadian war diary files to index first.  One day, Vulnavia, one day ...

"McTeague" By Frank Norris

This is mentioned briefly by Ol' Steve in "The Shining", where he mentions McTeague - a dentist, of all things - being handcuffed, alone, to a dead man in the middle of Death Valley, which is the very end of the book.  I shan't apologise for spoiling it for you, it's been out for 121 years so you've got absolutely no comeback.

     Your Humble Scribe, of course - obviously! - had to go look up a precis of it, and grim indeed the whole miserable thing seemed to be.  Everyone ends up either dead or mad, much like Dostoevsky's stuff, except without the snow.  Art?

     That cover lies, it's not a cheery little tale at all.  Now that you know, you can avoid it in future.  I know I shall.

"Death Valley Nights"

Since we're on the topic and in the area, I thought it incumbent upon me to mention this Blue Oyster Cult track, where the lyrics are derived from collaborator Richard Meltzer, and the song itself is on the epic "Spectres" album (the one with all the illegally-powerful lasers on it).  Art?

Citizens of the Pond of Eden look on with envy

     The song is allegedly about lost loves.  Which automatically makes a desert landscape that broils at 500 Centigrade leap into one's mind, nicht wahr?  Mind you, it is about 'nights', so presumably it would be considerably cooler than in the searing daytime.

Egad! Nothing About The Moon Yet!

Quickly, for this has been a consistent and popular theme of late, and Conrad will stoop to any Machiavellian stunt in order to boost traffic <thinks> how about another song with the Moon featured in the lyrics?  Yes, there is "Moon Crazy" by The Cult Of The Blue Oyster but i) They've already been mentioned, and ii) we tend to be quite mocking and disrespectful in these musical asides, and I like BOC.

     Aha!  "Bad Moon Rising" by Creedence Clearwater Revival.

I hear hurricanes a-blowing

I know the end is coming soon

I fear rivers over flowing

I hear the voice of rage and ruin

There's a bad moon on the rise

     

        Well, there may be, old chap - that global warming, hmmm? - but you can console yourself with the fact that it won't be there in the morning -

Bad Moon!  Naughty Moon!  No popcorn for you!

 - er - which is a bit ambiguous in light of that picture above.

Finally -

This is "Architect's Daughter", which I thought I'd test-drive just to see what it looks like in a couple of sentences.  What do you think?  Not that I'll pay any attention to you, because, once again, whose blog is it***?

 *  Don't ask me, I only work here.

**  Credit the chap, he never actually writes this.

***  Which is where we came in.

From Manchester To The Moon

Not Literally

Goodness me, no!  Can you imagine sending a rocket from Picadilly Gardens into deepest space?  Why, it would shatter that grim concrete wall carbuncle, and destroy the fountains that chavs like to dance in, and demolish all the numberless identical coffee-shops - hmmmmm <muses and ponders> actually, that sounds like a pretty good outcome ...

Britain's Bit Of Berlin

     Sorry, where were we?

     O yes - Conrad has cunningly managed to combine both pub signage and the Moon in one concept, as the Moon seems to be what people want to read about above all else on BOOJUM! and who am I to dispute this?  Art?

 

    This venue is owned by the Wetherspoons chain <hack! spit!> and it's only real distinction is how large it is.  This is because it used to be a cinema, one that Your Humble Scribe went in occasionally, too - I think I saw that terrifying documentary "They Live" when it was still a cinema.
     Which brings us back to the big news for today - ignore all that piffle about elections and hijacking at sea - the discovery of water on the Moon's sunny uplands.  Yes really!  Art?

A very high heigh-ho indeed.
(240,000 miles high)

     This is quite remarkable because those areas of the Moon exposed to direct sunlight bake in temperatures in the hundreds of degrees, the complete opposite of where water-ice has been found previously, in permanently-shadowed craters.  Yet there it is.  The equivalent, we are told, of a 12 ounce bottle of water HOORAY FOR IMPERIAL MEASUREMENTS in a cubic metre yard of lunar material.  This means if you dig out a cube of lunar rock 10 yards to a side, you'd get a third of a ton of water, which you can then hydrolise down into hydrogen for fuel and oxygen for breathing.  Art!

And over it all, the mortal fear of farting in a space-suit ...

     If Moonbase Mara - hang on - when did I make a note about "Moonbase Mara" - Dog Buns, that's Art trying to sneak a reference to his pash into the blog! excuse me whilst I deploy the Autonomous Hunting Tazer <distant sounds of screams and sizzling>

    AS I WAS SAYING, if the denizens of a Moonbase can fuel themselves up from local resources instead of having to carry fuel for both legs of a voyage, it makes travel much cheaper and easier.  Need to get your interplanetary cruiser from Earth to Mars?  Just beetle over to the Moon to top up your tanks instead of lofting hundreds if not thousands of tons of same from the bottom of a gravity well.

          Motley!  Let's break out the mallets and play a round or two of Whack-a-Machine-gun-Mounting-Mole!

Taking The Polish Off

Yes, Conrad has just finished reading "The Shining" - how could you tell? - and made a few notes.  For a start, there's an error on Page 234 when the Torrances are playing in the snow with a sled, and, with "Danny" in the sled, Wendy and Danny strain to move the sled at all. Obviously this should read "Jack"*.

     

My edition

     What's wrong with this picture?  Well, if you've read the novel you know the Overlook Hotel has three floors and an attic and a roof seventy feet above the ground.  Bad illustrator!  Naughty illustrator!  No gravy for you!

     At one point in the text a harassed Park Ranger explains that he can't send help to the Overlook as all available rangers are out trying to help three inexperienced idiots who tried climbing "King's Ram" and got stuck in the blizzard.

     THERE IS NO "KING'S RAM"!  I have diligently searched for same all across Colorado and no such peak, gulley, col, cliff, overhang or chimney exists. There is, however, an author with a pawky sense of humour.  Grrrr.

WHY!  Why do you put yourself through this?

     Then there was a reference to "Hamburger Helper", another pop-culture item Your Humble Scribe had never encountered before.  Art?

Conrad not enthused

     And that's enough for Stevie, he's sold enough books that he doesn't need me shilling for him.

That "Rolling Stone" Top 50 Sci-Fi Shows On Television List

I have been meaning to post this one for ages and ages, and am having to make an effort as it's late and the glazzies are tired.  On to Number 7!

     It was definitely spit-hot in it's early years, with episodes varying from stand-alone monster-of-the-week to others that integrated into a vast conspiratorial arc, the sceptical Scully (a delicious Gillian Anderson) and faithful Mulder (an actually very disbelieving David Duchovny) and their perpetual will-they-won't-they status about a romance, and various shadowy government agencies conspiring with or against them - look no further than "The X Files"  for the roots of every modern fable, myth or conspiracy theory going**.

     It did outstay it's welcome, admittedly, but at least it wasn't another vacuous reality show.***

The "Nodding Donkey"

Not sure why this cropped up in my mind, except that it did, and so here it is.  I would like to point out that it's nothing to do with Feld Marschall Keitel, one of Herr Schickelgruber's most senior toadies in the Second Unpleasantness and a man dismissed by his direct reports as "Lakeitel" ("Lackey") or "The Nodding Donkey" as all he did was say "Yes!" to his overlord.  Art?

      The more formal name for these is a 'Pumpjack', though you can see why the donkey allusion sticks.  Propelled by an engine at the back, these things nod up and down day in, day out, helping to pump up poor tired oil that hasn't enough pressure to make it out of the ground.

     They may seem faintly ridiculous, or sinister, and Conrad as a smaller version of himself was not wildly enamoured of them, but a single one can pump thousands of tons of oil per year, without needing so much as a single strand of hay.

Finally -

Just a short end item, about another person doing the worst thing imaginable yet for the most sincere of reasons.

     We go back to January 2019, when a Dutch citizen in the town of Venlo, blissfully digging up his backyard, unearthed was was described as "an explosive device".  He regarded it with suspicion and dumped sand on it, whereupon it began to whistle.  With commendable public-spiritedness, he draped himself over the weapon, before calling the Dutch bomb-squad.  

     

     They took 3 hours to arrive, by which time he was suffering from hypothermia.  We never got to see exactly what he was lying on, and it was described as either a "grenade" or "shell", which was thankfully inert.  Had it not been, he would have been up for a bit of scission himself.

     "Lying on bombs is not recommended," said the Dutch EOD spokesperson.  "They are lumpy, ill-designed ergonomically and you might put your back out."

     And with that we are so very very done!

*  Conrad 1 Stephen King 0

**  "It must be true - it was on "The X Files!" is a favourite conspiranoid loonwaffle bleat.

***  Because of course it was all made up.  Obviously.