It's About Time

No!  Not "The Time Tunnel" nor "Doctor Who" Nor "Goodnight Sweetheart"

Which exhausts Your Humble Scribe's knowledge of television programmes that deal with travel in the fourth dimension.  One supposes that "Planet Of The Apes" might fall into this category, but then so might "Catweazle", and where would we be then*?

In the soup.  Or the bath. Hot water, anyway.

     No, tonight I intend to talk about "Pride And Prejudice", a novel by Jane Austen that you are probably a lot more familiar with as films (or television series, if any have been done, which I cannot be bothered to Google about).  Art?

     Conrad has just finished reading the book and won't bother reading it again, it can go in the bag of books to be taken off to the charity shops at some point.  It is extremely mannered, having being written about the turn of 1800, and very little happens, whilst taking an extraordinarily long time to do so.  There is also the literary equivalent of angels dancing on pin heads 

Art - you bafoon!

     - where various critics and fans try to work out what year the novel is set in.  Some say 1812, some say 1802, some say 1794.  It would appear that gallons of ink have been expended in this debate, whilst they manage to miss a point, which Conrad takes a churlish delight in pointing out.  Art!

Kitty.  But lightly endowed with intellect, sense, propriety or shame.

    At one point in the text we are very definitely in August, the exact day being open to dispute yet not the month.  Mrs. Bennett then exclaims that Kitty had reached age 16 "only last June".  Not "this June" or "June just past"; so she should then be 17.
     Yes, this is hair-splitting pedantry.  What else do you come here for?  Any answer that invokes "Victorian brass faucet collecting" will be justifiably ignored.
     Motley!  Have your feet recovered from the Lava Hopscotch of earlier today?  Great, because we're going to be doing the Shark Sprint Swim!

Matters Of Weight

Conrad, as he walked Edna this afternoon, was pondering.  This is a bit of a given during walkies, and should give you all cause for concern, as there's no telling what would get pondered.

     Today it was the relatively innocuous subject of "Raiders Of The Lost Ark"'s opening sequence, when Doctor Jones the graverobber artefact-finder locates a golden idol he intends to steal relocate "museum" back to South Canada.  Art?

     Okay.  Here's Problem Number One.  Well, Problem Number One-Point-Five.  For this location is obviously well-hidden and untraversed, to judge by the sheer quantity of cobwebs, and don't forget the immensely long trailing vines that have grown into the incredibly deep pit, which could not happen overnight.  This place is ooooooold.  So, why would all the originally designed death features still work after decades if not centuries?   Hmmm?

     No, sorry, "Secret maintenance tunnels that the local tribes use to keep things running" won't work, since otherwise you could short-cut all the traps by using said maintenance tunnels and a pickaxe to break through the underground chamber wall at the end.  So that skunk won't stink.
     Problem Two: what kind of mechanism operates and descends when a weight is removed from it?

Thus

     It would have been just as effective if the altar-stone rose higher, instead of defying gravity and physics.
     We're not done here, so I shall continue tomorrow.

     Of course, I could be overthinking this a little ...

Paper Trail And Travail

If you keep up with BOOJUM! at all then you know Conrad is slowly plodding his way through the online Canuckistanian War Diaries of the Second Unpleasantness, 1,353 files with no titles or dates to them, and no index.  I have managed to open and classify about 120 and we are now up to the Headquarters files of the 2nd Canadian Armoured Brigade.  Art!

     The two pictures above give you some idea of the print quality captured on the digitised files; things may have been more legible at the time in 1944, before the ink had faded, and one can also presume that the typewriters in use were well-work with ribbons running out of ink.  This makes reading them a tad difficult.

     This is also an embarrassment of riches.  At a conservative estimate there are at least 2,000,000 pages in these war diaries, meaning if I did nothing but read them full-time (which I would gladly volunteer to do if they paid me a living wage to do so!) it would still take two and a half years to get through them.  Once.  Without making any notes about them.  Hence my indexing operation, which will at least allow a bit of focus.

1st Canadian Armoured Brigade in Italy

     As another military history anorak confirmed, the Canuckistanians are determined to get all their Official Histories and war diaries and so on accessible via the internet, for free.  Here in This Sceptred Isle?  ££££££ sorry.

Arrakis Art

Just a brief item here, as I wanted to put up a picture by the late artist John Schoenherr, who was validated by author Frank Herbert as the only artist he'd ever seen to capture the essence of what Herbert, himself, saw "Dune" looking like in his own head.  Art?

     That's Arrakis at top and some Fremen at bottom.  All very timely now that a new film of "Dune" is coming out soon.  One wonders if the production designers took a look at Ol' Jon's prior daubings.  Sadly, no Pink Floyd soundtrack.

Finally -

We occasionally feature true stories about idiots who imperil themselves thanks to heaping handfuls of stupidity, frequently helped along by alcohol.  Today we travel back in time to September 2019, when a tourist at Yellowstone Park appeared at the Old Faithful Inn, claiming to have fallen off the boardwalk and into a geyser.

CAUTION!  Never try to get Under The Boardwalk

     He was rushed to the airport by ambulance and then by helicopter to hospital.  Park Rangers had to wait until morning to examine the scene of the broiling, as the hapless ham had hurled himself hitherwards late at night.  They found a trail of footprints leading away from the boardwalk, a hat and <drum roll> beer cans.

     There the story ends.  We presume the ham survived, or there'd be a black border around his tale.

      So, if you happen to be in a national park full of geysers that contain BOILING WATER, do not venture off the boardwalk, especially at night without a torch, and especially not if you're canned.

Risking a cooking

     And with that, we are done!

*  Do NOT mention " Crime Traveller".  Not ever.  Really.