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