Dead Set

On Omelette

Yeah verily, great-aunt Emily.  As you ought to know by now, Conrad is both a pedantic-hair-splitter of the very worst (or best) kind, and wont to take a look at things people have long taken for granted.  The whole salted with zombies, tanks and atom bombs.

Great!  All we need is a nuke and we're sorted

     For today I'd like to tackle one of those old sayings that people resort to without properly parsing their logic and applicability: "Teaching your grandmother to suck eggs".  It means to waste your time and effort in tutoring someone in a skill they already possess.

     There's a raw egg.  Delicious, hmmmm?  EXCEPT NOT! 

     Why on earth would your grandmother be skilled in sucking an egg, since to sucksessfully (do you see what I - O you do) manage such a feat, the egg would have to be raw and uncooked.  A gelid, slimy, noxious bolus of uncooked protein <gags slightly> and you can't argue that the aphorism refers to scrambled or poached eggs, either; those you would eat, not suck.  Try inhaling scrambled egg and you'd end up with scrambled lungs.  

Madam, your egg is trying to escape.

     Given that it takes about four minutes to boil an egg, and a mere minute to microwave one AFTER YOU STIR IT ALL UP, what is the desperate tearing hurry to imbibe one raw?  "Tradition," I hear the idiots amongst you reply.  Ah.  Yes.  Tradition.  Go back to an outside toilet and no central heating then, you Luddite.  
     Motley!  I've Black-and-Deckered a hole in either end of this egg, kindly complete the experiment by sucking the insides out.  You'll need both hands.

Those Darwin Award Winners

Conrad is nursing a touch of huffiness after James Bond copied a blog title, even if they copied it 45 years ago, and then to cap it all they include an alligator farm <exceedingly cross face>.  Alligators are not kindly domesticated critters, they possess all the charm and restraint of a carnivorous dinosaur, which is why James was in trouble when they came crawling after him.

     Still, he didn't go looking for trouble and crawl to them first, did he?  No.  Even after a bucketful of martinis he'd have more sense*.  Enter another DAW.  

Kissy loves you

     There appears to have been a quantity of wine involved.  A manicurist was making a home visit in Charleston, South Carolina, when she spotted an alligator on the customer's property, and went to take photographs.  Despite shrieked warnings from the customer and husband that the monster had eaten a deer, she went to pet it, stating that she " - didn't look like a deer."
     No, she looked like dinner.  

     The alligator seized her, dragged her into a nearby pond and drowned her, as they are prone to do.  Things ended badly for the reptile, which was shot the instant it put it's head out of the water.  

Kissy loves all of you.

     These things can move very quickly for short bursts, have an arsenal of fangs and love love love to eaty the meaty.  What was she thinking?

"The White Company" By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

I have just finished this and know you'll be dying to hear my take on it.  For one thing, the title is a misnomer, as we don't meet the White Company until nearly 75% into the novel.  This does give SACD plenty of time to establish a milieu, which he does convincingly, because the fourteenth century was O so very different from today.  

Roy's Castle

     No central heating or indoor plumbing, you'll be horrified to know.  Mind you, there weren't any pineapples, either, so there is a bit of positive balance.  And as ever, the language!  You can derive some concepts from context, though not all.  Shall we?

"Banderole":  Aha!  An ornamental streamer on a knight's lance, apparently.  Do we have a picture, Art?

Big with banderole

"Salade": this might be a weapon, a variation on a lance or spear, definitely nothing to do with cold vegetables better suited to rabbits than humans.

NO! It's not a robot.  Bafoon.

     It's a type of helmet!  As in that above.  Which would have given one an incredibly narrow view of the battlefield.

"Martlet": I think this must be an heraldic beast, as it was described as being a design upon a shield.  

     And Hay Pesto! it is indeed, being a bird without any legs or feet, which was permanently aloft and that never came in to roost, so where did it lay it's eggs if I may ask <ENOUGH WITH THE EGGS! - Mister Hand intervenes on your behalf> devilled ones.
"Nakirs": musical instruments, is my guess, but I can't decide whether trumpets or drums.  

Drums it is

     Ah yes one can just see them beating the retreat on these, just as you would beat an egg <I'M WARNING YOU! - Mister Hand getting tetchy on your behalf> a balloon whisk.
     Well there we are, all better aware of medieval language and artefacts than we were five minutes ago.

     Just so you know, I have now started "Le Mort D'Arthur" by Sir Thomas Malory, which is 800 pages of late fifteenth century language.  I'll let you know.

Another Great Mystery Debunked

You ought to recall that Conrad recently found a Reader's Digest volume from 1990 under the bookcase, and wondered if any of these supposed mysteries had been debunked since then.

     Well, yes, actually.  Art?

Imposter.  Sorry but there it is.

     This concerned the execution (we are being euphemistic here) of the Romanov royal family in July 1918, as they were being held by the Sinisters and it looked as if the White Russians (who hated the Reds) were going to liberate Ekaterinberg, where they were prisoners.  Typically Sinister, they decided to kill the whole lot as well as their domestic servants, and then - equally typically Sinister - decided to lie about it until 1991.

     In the meantime there were umpteen pretenders who claimed to be the miraculously surviving and escaped Anastasia, the youngest of the Tsar's daughters, the most famous of whom was Anna Anderson.  She turned out to be an utter fraud, being a bonkers Polish factory worker when her DNA was analysed.  Oooops.  Then the Sinisters revealed the burying place of the royal family, which still had two bodies missing.  They were both accounted for in 2007, so we now know definitively that the whole Romanov family were wiped out.

     Since the collapse of the Sinisters, the Romanovs have been politically rehabilitated, with some harsh words being directed at the perpetrators.  Expect Tsar Putin to see if he can squeeze some credit out of this somehow, and, if not any credit, some ready cash.

     And with that, we are done.  Just like these eggs I was frying

*  Do they have eggs in martinis?  Or is that advocaat?