It Is Said That History Repeats Itself
The first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. Of course, history being all historical and shizzle, it is inevitable that on occasion the first time round we meet the Keystone Cops variety of history, instead of the "Line Of Duty" version.
Do I need to lecture you in exactly what the Keystone Cops were? <sighs heavily and theatrically> O alright then. Art!
They were, not to put too fine a point upon it, a bunch of incompetent idiots who couldn't catch a cold at the South Pole, forever running around randomly, falling over and driving dangerously.
Yes, that is Fatty Arbuckle at starboard
Don't ask about Fatty Arbuckle or we'll generate an infinitely recursive blog that becomes a literary Moebius strip. The Keystones were a creation of Mack Sennet's Keystone Studios - do you see what he did there? - from 1912 onwards, becoming an ensemble backing for other star performers such as Charlie Chaplin.
There, we have set the scene.
Where was I? O yes -
For Lo! I have discovered an interesting and amusing item in the recounting of "Military Operations: Gallipoli" before the campaign got going. At the beginning of the First Unpleasantness, the Ruffians, you see, who were allies of Perfidious Albion, were having trouble with the Turks, and begged/cajoled/pleaded <delete where applicable> a little for help in distracting them.
"Certainly!" replied the Royal Navy, glad to be able to make marine mischief. Enter 'Doris'. Art?
This battle-beast sailed to Alexandretta, which is now known as Iskenderun, part of the Ottoman empire in 1914, where a strategic railway ran not far from the shore. You can probably guess where this is going ...
That's HMS Doris to you
A naval party was landed, whom then ventured inland and destroyed a stretch of the railway, causing the next train along to become violently derailed. A stern message was sent to the Turkish governor of Alexandretta, threatening a bombardment if all military assets were not forfeit or destroyed. Feeling even friskier, said naval party moved up the coast, destroyed more track and blew up a bridge, besides cutting telegraph wires. Next morning the Turks caved in, rather, and agreed to blow up their 'military assets' - a pair of locomotives - but only if the nice British lent them some explosives, please, as they had none of their own. On being presented with a suspicious British naval officer carrying gun-cotton, Turkish pride jibbed at him blowing up Turkish locomotives on Turkish soil, in front of Turks. O what to do!
As a compromise, he was temporarily given the rank of a Turkish naval officer, which salved Turkish pride enough for the two locomotives to be slain with explosives.
This farcial throwback to 1814 was taken as an indication of how utterly inept the Turks were, and that their army would be ridiculously easy to beat.
"Attack of the steel spaghetti-snakes!!"
Hmmmmmmm, said Conrad, pondering thoughtfully. I wonder if you can derail a train by leaving a stray motley on the tracks? Motley? O motley!
Ironically Enough ...
Predictably, Conrad has a gripe about one of the solutions to Sunday's Codewords, which was "BEYS" and yes, I did check that was correct and it is. The plural of 'Bey', and what does my Collins Concise have to say about it? "1) In the Ottoman Empire, a title given to provincial governors". It that's not irony then it must be the Coincidence Hydra having a chew on my nethers. Art!
We shall now leave this in <ahem> abeyance*.
Humans Behaving Badly
Conrad does worry about Hom. Sap. betimes. There are so many foolish people out there who don't even need the excuse that they drank a whole keg of Special Brew, before doing exceedingly stupid things. Thus the Darwin Awards will never run out of nominees. Art!
These pictures show, respectively: a go-kart race track at night (NOTE THE PROMINENT ILLUMINATION), and a set of go-karters (NOTE THE PROTECTIVE GEAR).
The protagonist, or Idiot-In-Charge, had already broken into the go-kart racecourse at Showtime Speedway to race on a purloined kart. Not learning from this, perhaps emboldened by doing it and still being alive, he and his equally stupid friend broke in again, this time at 22:00 hours, which you will recognise as being night-time, and one suspects beer was involved. Neither man possessed a helmet. They stole 2 karts and Idiot-In-Charge had accelerated up to 40 m.p.h. when he crashed into the guard rails. Yes, driving at speed in the dark is dangerous - who knew! and infinitely more so if not wearing a helmet. With a head resembling Humpty Dumpty, he died shortly afterwards. Really, what did he expect?
Anyone for omlette?
Time For More Tales Of Derring-Do
This time we're going to look at King Mark of Cornwall - for Yes! we are back on the subject of "Le Mort D'Arthur" - whom you may well know to be an utter coward and villain, really like a Victorian vaudeville villain. He probably tweaks his moustache ends and passes port the wrong way.
ANYWAY King Arthur has a court fool, Sir Dagonet, whom was with a party of other Knights of the Round Table, when they espied King Mark slinking - actually riding but 'slinking' sounds more apt - off with a small coterie of followers.
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| Sir D. |
Who wets himself with terror at the sight of Sir Launcelot charging at him, swinging a sword. Marky hies himself yonder as fast as possible, aware that should he survive, a change of underwear will be needed.
How we all laughed!
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| Not King Mark, obviously |
Finally -
You know, the formatting on Blogger does seem to have settled down as I would wish it, with single-line spacing and paragraph breaks. Must have resolved to be sensible for the New Year.
What can we finish with? O I know - A Finnish science-fiction magazine cover, because why not! Art?
You have to admit it's a lot more classy than all those cheesy "Thrilling Wonder Stories" we've featured of late, even if it in fact seems to be a book cover rather than a magazine. Well, Your Humble Scribe doesn't have time to trawl teh interwebz for such a thing, I've got heart-shaped crumpets and peach jam to consume, so I am declaring us done!
* O come on! How could I possibly resist a bit of punnery like that!
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