See Venom

This Is Me Being Clever

(At least in the privacy of my own head).  

     For the "Venom" part I am not talking about that recent film featuring Tom Hardy, even though having seen the trailer I don't need to see the film (which seemed a bit rubbish anyway).  No, I am talking about the South Canadian rattlesnake, of the family Viperidae, as seen in countless Western films and televisions shows.  Art!

     This creature will actively avoid human contact, unless you are clumsy enough to ignore the warning rattle and tread on it, in which case "Where is the nearest hospital?" becomes your catchphrase.  Also, beware their head, as they can still bite even after being decapitated, in which case "Where is the nearest hospital that deals with zombie snake victims?" becomes your catchphrase.  Typically their prey is small, small enough for them to ingest whole, because snakes never really caught on to the whole knives-and-forks-and-cutlery thing*.

     That there is a Youtube channel with this as the title is as much warning you need that Hom. Sap. can be ridiculously stupid.  Enter our Darwin Award winners, two South Canadian farm workers who finished their day by consuming alcohol, and in liberal quantities, too.  They had caught a rattlesnake during their working day.

     Alcohol.  Rattlesnake.  You can see where this is going, can't you?

     Yup.  Our two champions decided to play "Catch The Snake", catching it by the tail, releasing it, then catching it again.  I dunno, maybe you had to have gone through a bottle of Jack Daniels for it to seem amusing.  The snake, being entirely sober, though increasingly annoyed, did not find the game amusing, not by a long chalk, and bit Joe, who died an hour later.  You may note that this terminal fate is extremely rare in South Canada, since 99% of all rattlesnake bite victims survive.  So, Joe can feel proud for managing a notable feat after all!

Relax.  This one is dead.

     Note that after Idiot One was bitten, Idiot Two (we shall call him "Chuck") also managed to get bitten, which begs the question as to what on earth he was doing?

     This is just one more illustration as to how life in Perfidious Albion is so much safer than over the pond.

Sea Venom

Ah, here comes the clever bit**.  This was a jet fighter, part of the Fleet Air Arm, back when Perfidious Albion had enough ships to call them a 'fleet', which served on aircraft carriers.  Art!

     It mounted cannon and rockets and bombs, for in the Fifties that was what you had to work with, no fire-and-forget missiles than sing, dance and make you a cup of tea at breakfast.  It saw service at Suez, and most remarkably the French built licenced copies of it, called the "Aquilon".  They don't often do that, the M8s, so it must have had a lot going for itself.

Speaking Of Aircraft Carriers

Your Humble Scribe has recently come across a Youtube channel calling itself "Dimple", which consists of North Korean defectors being exposed to hideous Western civilisation, whilst dressed in their old uniforms, and speaking in Korean.  There are subtitles, which is fortunate, as Conrad does not speak Korean.  Art!

     Hello Kim.  The subtitles can be rather odd, as they don't translate properly at times and you get what I suspect are idioms, which the software translates literally.  ANYWAY here's Kim, and when she says "minister" that's not the kind of minister you find in a church.  Then they show this charmingly ingenuous lady footage of a South Canadian aircraft carrier in action.

     "Wow!" is her comment and that, though in Korean, Conrad could clearly understand.  She was visibly gobsmacked at the size of this beast, saying "A city is on the sea!" and calling it a "floating island", all of which is true.  And do you know what?  The South Canadians have six of these monsters cruising the globe at any one time.  Nuclear powered, with nuclear ordnance (one suspects) available should it be needed, one of these could probably turn the entire peninsula of North Korea into gently-glowing wasteland.  They haven't bothered, which Kim may wonder means her native dictatorship isn't worth bothering about.

                 거룩한 톨레도!

      Don't forget, the Ruffians only have one decrepit carrier still in dry dock after having been parked there a year ago, which they can't afford to repair or refit after the propellers came off (and the dry dock sank, and a big crane fell on the carrier and - you know, someone cursed that carrier), and whilst the Populous People's Dictatorship has one, they don't really know what to do with it.  Perfidious Albion has been building aircraft carriers for over a century now, so we know what to do with them***.

Hello Shelli!

It is passing strange to see oneself where one ought not to be, and NO, I am not talking about being on a "Wanted" poster as it never happened and lots of people look like me, and I have an alibi -

     Where were we?  

     O yes -

     Colleague Shelli, whom we have mentioned enough times in the past that we ought to be getting royalties, has cropped up again, or at least her doppelganger has.  Art!

     Shelli is the pouty yellow-haired lass going "Oooh oooh look at my cheekbones".  Even the tattoo is reproduced.  Conrad not sure how she managed this in lockdown - Photoshop?  Greenscreen? 

     That, of course, is the benign explanation.  The malign one?  Well, if the lady above is Shelli's doppelganger, then it's an evil version of herself, who will seek to destroy her and replace her on Earth <cue evil cackle>.  Mind you, unless the doppelganger can play violin and cello, their masquerade will be over in double quick time.  As will their lack of love for the unicorn.

Finally -

Well, we have made the Compositional Ton, so it's time to take off my human skin and plug back into the mains for a recharge, whilst the Guard Hog patrols the Anti-Locomotive Lava Moat.  Chin Chin!

*  Points and laughs at those without mutually opposable digits!

**  Humour me here.

***  Have them swan around the Baltic and upset Tsar Putin!