A Saying Which Might Baffle Some
That would be the unfortunate some who are unlucky enough not to live upon This Sceptred Isle, poor swine. Today's title means 'to muck about with things' and the implication is that you're doing the mucking about with insufficient reason.
For Lo! we are back on "Le Mort D'Arthur" again. Yes, you may well face-palm, I'm only on page 230 of 800, so this subject matter is going to crop up again, whether you like it or not <tweaks moustache ends like a verminous Victorian vaudeville villain, verily>. Art!
Yes yes yes, a smashed piano has no relevance here, we're just seeking to add a little frisson to the blog. Do you really want - O you do. Go on then, though I doubt we can find any pictures of Sir Gareth. Art!
There you go. Book Seven of LMDA is mostly about Sir Gareth, who is an unusually large young man, who gets made a knight by Sir Launcelot. For some reason not yet explained, Sir G keeps himself anonymous at all times, instead of letting King Arthur know that he's the son of King Lot of Orkney. Must be a bet (or a dare).
Well, I'll be swornhoggled
Anyway, one of his adventures concerns raising the siege of the Castle Perilous, which name gave Conrad pause. Who would call their castle "Perilous"? Is it a poorly-designed fire-trap with bad ventilation and an infestation of giant rabid were-rats? Or does it sit atop a mountain, accessible only via a single narrow bridge with no side walls over a hundred-foot drop? Is the local countryside haunted by man-eating giants who have been running rampant for seven weeks/months/years <delete where applicable>?
ANYWAY
CAUTION! Liable to be haunted by Goths
The siege is lifted when Sir G - whom is as good a knight in combat as Sir Launcelot, which is pretty phenomenal - beats the Red Knight of the Red Launds, and - O what's this but a most attractive damosel within the castle! The Lady Lionesse (nothing to do with Edgar Allan Poe), with whom Sir G. instantly falls in love with, salted with a fair bit of lust; and the feeling(s) are reciprocated.
Here things take a turn for the maddest. Sir G had been sent to raise the siege at behest of Linet, sister of Lionesse, who for weeks does nothing but insult Sir G, until she finally repents and admits that he's a good knight. Here also enters a touch of the green-eyed monster, Conrad cynically determines, as Linet decides to prevent Gareth from sleeping with her sister before they are married.
That's Linet above, where you can judge her true feelings thanks to ignoring inter-personal spacing. Well, to stop Sir G <ahem> 'getting jiggy with it', she conjures up a knight who attacks Sir G when the jiggy is about to commence. The fight is short as the attacker is knocked flat, un-helmeted and decapitated in the space of a few minutes; Sir G not a chap to get on the wrong side of (I did warn you). Not remotely abashed, Linet produces an ointment that she spreads on the severed head and the neck, reattaching the two and leading the now very much alive knight off to her quarters.
Sir Gareth gets the horn*
WITCH ALERT! WITCH ALERT!
Yeah. Sir G tries the premature-jiggy manoeuvre the next night, only for the undead zombie revenant knight to do the attacking thing again. This time Sir G not only hews his head off, he chops it into a hundred pieces and throws the pieces out of a window into the moat.
Guess who shows up, again, with her Magic Zombie Ointment, and all one hundred 'gobbets' of head? Why, WITCHY Linet, and you can bet she was able to float on the moat to recover all those bits. Blech. She does the reanimation slather with her MZO and -
That's how today's blog got it's title.
CAUTION! Repeated decapitation can be harmful
Wow, that went on a bit, hmmm? Don't worry, next up we have AIRCRAFT CARRIERS! for your delectation.
Aircraft Carriers
These monstrous marine <thinks> mastodons (?) came of age in the Second Unpleasantness, where they were used to conduct offensive operations, notably in the Pacific (ironic name, hmmm?), and also as a protective measure for convoys, especially in the Atlantic (can't think of ironic joke about this, sorry). You can get an idea of South Canada's sheer industrial muscle by looking at the chart below.
Although Perfidious Albion managed pretty well (preens). Look at those two combined: 182 aircraft carriers. That's NINE TIMES the total of the next largest, the Imperial Japanese Navy. Forget the Teutons, they never managed to get anything in service and if they had it would have been sunk quick smart.
As of today, the South Canadians number TEN nuclear-powered monster aircraft carriers, with another 9 smaller vessels that they quibble "are not realllllly aircraft carriers". They are. How's that refurbishment of the "Admiral Kuznetsov" coming along, Dimya? If the world's unluckiest ship ever gets back into service, then the Ruffians will have a whole ONE aircraft carrier. Although they will then go red in the face bloviating how "aircraft carriers are obsolete" and "we don't care"**.
O Dearie Me
Conrad is not sure exactly how he came across it, but he has. A blog called "The Horrors Of It All", which deals with South Canadian comics before the Comics Code came into being - you remember, thanks partly to all the bias and lies peddled in "Seduction of the Innocent".
Too late. See you in three hours.
Finally -
For the past 6 hours Your Humble Scribe and five others have been playing a wargame at a remove. Phil and I are the Teuton players, Andy and Richard are the French players, and neither team can see the actual wargames table. We have a map, we issue orders to our units, and have reports back about what is or isn't happening, except of course it's not quite that simple, because units don't always receive their orders, or receive them and are then forgotten about, or they encounter the enemy where no enemy should be. Not to mention real life intervening, as when my laptop crashed, or when Edna came to take station on my lap. It all reflects what happens in real life and how frustrating it can be. Richard - the runner and umpire, not the French player - has been taking photos of the gaming table as events occur, which will be very interesting to compare with the orders issued and reports given. You will UNDOUBTEDLY get to hear more of this!
"Paging doctor Freud -"
And that's us for today. Toodle pip!
* WASH OUT YOUR FILTHY FILTHY MINDS!
** Possibly also resorting to taking their football home and thus ending the game
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