Words Of Wonder

 I Mean, Apart From The Ones On Here

You know Conrad, or you ought to by now if you've been ensuring the safety of your distant descendants and faithfully reading BOOJUM! for Lo! these many years.  If not "years" then "many months" is acceptable, barely.

Otherwise - this will be your great-great-grandchildren in the uranium mines!

     No, what I mean is encountering a word during the day and wondering "I wonder where that comes from?" or "I wonder what that means?" or "Will this mental flotsam ever stop appearing in my brains?*"

     For example: "Schiltron".  I can guess what you'll guess about this, given that the blog's staples are science-fiction and robots of all guises.  Art?

"Extrapolate!  Extrapolate!"

  Yes, just look at the evil technobot Schiltron, ready to wage war on humanity (yes yes yes I know it's actually Box from "Logan's Run"; I'm making a poetic point here, you pedants) -

     Er no.  No.  In real life Schiltrons were equally as deadly as Box, if rather less hi-tec, seeing as how they were pike formations of the Scots in their wars to earn freedom from the Eeevil English.  Art?

"A typical Saturday night in Glasgow."

     The idea was to have a positive wall of spears, braced at the front at an angle, and with the ranks behind levelling their spears over the shoulders of the first rank.  The whole thing could move in attack or defence and was well able to deter cavalry, since horses have a natural aversion to being punctured.
     There you go, effortlessly shifting from the twenty-second century to the fourteenth.

     "Bildungsroman": I knew I'd remember this one, for Your Humble Scribe wrote it down on his work notebook as it popped into my head this morning.  My Collins Concise defines it as a novel that describes the formative years of a person, usually from youth into adulthood, which are rather flexible terms, nicht wahr?  I had to resort to teh interwebz for some examples, and Dog Buns! if I haven't already read some.  For example: "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" by James Joyce; "To Kill A Mockingbird" by Harper Lee; "Dune" by Frank Herbert (really?!) and "The Goon" by Eric Williams.  Art?

TKAM still, which makes perfect sense if you've read the Bildungsroman

    "Char - it- y": This one is from last Wednesday's Cryptic Crossword (which I only completed today) and the clue was along the lines of "having being wary about having it inside".  I need to point out that "Chary" is a rarely-used word meaning "wary".  My Collins Concise boldly states that it comes from the Anglo-Saxon "Cearig", which in turn derives from "Caru", meaning "Care".  Art?

Children, be chary

Of the Cassowary

It has a big bill

And it's feet can kill.

     Every word true**.

That Scofflaw Jones

Doctor Henry Jones, that is, renowned explorer and <ahem> 'acquirer' of exhibits and artefacts across the globe, which he sends to museums, or keeps in his apartment.  For Lo! we are back on Legal Eagle's "Laws Broken" and we follow on from Indy's relentless trousering of rare and valuable items.  Art?

No.  But try stopping him!

     The next bit is downright creepy.  Seriously, if you want Indy to retain any of his childhood shine, skip this bit.

     Okay, Devon (the titular "Legal Eagle") points out that Marion, the love interest, is 25 in the film, and she belabours Doctor Jones about having had carnal relations with her ten years in the past ...

     I think you can see where this is going, and this wasn't some script oversight, as the writer and director and producer all sat down and agreed on the dates and ages.

"Karen disguised her judo hold as a loving embrace."

     Wow, kind of makes you think, hmmmm?
     Next we have <pauses for sinister oboe solo> murder ...

     Which can wait until tomorrow, as you reel into the kitchen for a fortifying whisky, weeping for your lost innocence.  Or were you drunk already?

Scrivel Of The Finest Order

Conrad, as you may imagine for a man with about fifty or sixty pens knocking around in the Sekrit Layr at any one time (with another thirty or so back in the office at work), is a chap who likes to write.  He has the A5 Pukka Pad which contains notes for BOOJUM!, and of late he has been listing those Canadian Diaries found on the Canadiana website.  Art?

    Here you go, page two of my long-hand scrawling.  As is apparent, I am only 57 files into 1,353.  I did cheat and jump forward several hundred to the War Diary of the 7th Medium Regiment, Royal Canadian Artillery, as below.

     And this, gentle readers, is me annotating and trying to make sense of army abbreviations and jargon done on poor-quality paper with weary typewriters running low on inked ribbon.  My intent was only to glance over things, so of course - obviously! - I was still reading and scribbling half an hour later.  Poor self-control, that's Conrad.

     Enough relentless self-promotion!  We need something less introverted and nerdy!  Bring on the LITHIUM WAFER BATTERY DES - perhaps not.  Aha!

Steady, Eddy

We have, of late, featured lighthouses in the blog for no other reason than that they're often incredible engineering and construction feats, given the circumstances under which they are erected - that is, high winds, lots of wave action and frequently very little land to build them on.  For some, the only time their foundations could be laid was during the very low water level of the spring tides.

     Enter the Eddystone Rocks.  Art?

The circle to port

     These are a set of treacherous reefs that are just covered at high tide and are only barely visible at low tide, and which happen to be set in the middle of an extremely busy marine route.  So, thought Mister Winstanley, let's build a lighthouse upon them!  This was quite the conceptual leap, as nobody had yet constructed such a thing out to sea.  It took two years to build - that difficulty thing I mentioned - and was first 'lit' in 1698, hurray!  Art?

     Mister Winstanley's exciting life extended to being taken prisoner by a French warship while he was on-site, helping to whittle planks.  The French king, very sportingly, had him released, since he was doing 'good works'.  Well done that French chap!

     And they all lived happily after well, no, for the saga has only just begun.  Tune in tomorrow for more lighthouse high jinks!

The shape of things to come

     And with that we are done!

*  Prognosis: very doubtful.

**Except two.  And I'm not telling you which ones they are.