Y O Y

Heh.  We Start With A Pun

And the fun's only just begun.  Of course, your idea of "Fun" may not be mine, and vice versa, since Conrad considers having to watch the ballfoot game a cruel and unusual punishment, yet he finds considerable gratification in comparative etymology.

<sighs> No, Art, that's "Entomology" <A Tazer crackles>

     Of course a mosquito that large would collapse under it's own weight, if it didn't asphyxiate first*.  

     Where were we?  Yes O Yes, that title.  We have moved beyond "Le Mort D'Arthur" and are now back on the epic semi-disaster of Gallipoli.  As you may recall from earlier this year, we left the A.N.Z.A.C. ("Australian and New Zealand Army Corps") having landed in the wrong place, scattered, not having reached their target lines and with the Turks massing against them.

     Next we jump to "Y" Beach, just one of the W, X,Y, Z and S beaches where landings were planned.  Art!

This landing is not celebrated in photographs for reasons that will become clear.  It began spiffingly, with 2,000 British troops being landed without any opposition at dawn, completely to a precise plan, at which point their commander decided to - sit still and wait.  Even the Official History, which is usually utterly anodyne when considering the performance and/or failings of senior officers, admits to his lack of gumption.  His orders had been to wait until troops from X Beach advanced to him before advancing further across the peninsula, which advance from X never happened.  Initiative not his strong suit, one fears.  Then, later in the afternoon, who happened upon the scene but Johnny Turk, in numbers, attacking aggressively.

     Ooops.

     

Unfriendly natives

     All these attacks were successfully beaten off, at the cost of heavy casualties.  A junior officer later requested that the Navy come back in to pick up his detachment, which was out of ammunition, cut off and with wounded, and the Navy did just that.  Seeing this, a lot of other British soldiers decided that, short of ammunition as they were, being re-embarked sounded like a jolly good idea, so they made their way to the beaches and got aboard anything that beached.  None of this was known to the British commander until he discovered a worrying lack of soldiers where there very definitely ought to be soldiers.  There was also the matter of ammunition, which was running short, and which came in two different types for the two different types of British rifle being used.  Art!

An example

     Colonel Matthews, the British commander at Y Beach, frantically and repeatedly tried to send messages to his commander requesting reinforcements and ammunition, which had to go from shore to ship at Y Beach, then from ship to ship at X Beach, and then to the Divisional HQ.  Which completely ignored all these messages.  Way to go, Divisional HQ!  Your Iron Cross second class is almost assured!

HMS Goliath, one of the ships in question at "Y"

  The hapless Matthews, with half of his men now back aboard ship, decided to evacuate completely, just at the point when the Turks, who had also suffered considerable casualties, were retreating headlong.  Doh squared.

     If ever there was an example of snatching defeat with both hands, feet and teeth, from the jaws of victory, this is it.  Your Humble Scribe may well decide to examine the "Whys" of "Y", despite not being an expert**.  And the reason no photographs are extant is because nobody was ashore long enough to take them.

     Motley!  We haven't played "Cannibal Mole Tunnelling" for a while.  Go get your spade.

Can Someone Please Translate Into English?

Conrad is well aware that he is bordering on sixty, and that this blog has been around for over seven years now, and yet there are still things about this modern world that he finds baffling.

Baffles baffling

     Take, for example, this somewhat psychedelic photograph, snatched raw from the pages of the BBC's website, which,  if that piker Art will stop slathering salve on his burns -

     One has to ask, who from what about which for when?  Your Humble Scribe has never encountered "Xenoblade Chronicles 1", let alone it's second iteration.  Whilst "Super Smash Bros. Ultimate" has the smell of a Mixed Martial Arts competition.  With swords?  Or perhaps flamethrowers, "Pyra" has to be a nod to "Pyro", which as we all know is from the Greek for "Fire", namely "Pur".

Yessss!  I got a "The Expanse" reference in!

     You don't have to explain in the Comments, and yes, I could always click on the link except it's my conceit that an article's title should inform the reader, not mystify them.
     

Talking Of Mosquitoes ...

Back at the beginning of today's blog, do keep up!  Of course Conrad cannot come across a word and not wonder where it comes from - etymology, don't you know, and this time it is about entomology.  Art!

Quite possibly not scientifically accurate

     Originally there was the Latin for "Fly", which is (or was) "Musca".  

     Here an aside.  You must be familiar with the most iconic of all toadstools, the "Amanita Muscaria", which is more familiary known as the "Fly Agaric" - Art!

Oddly enough, entirely free from flies***.

     And we then jump to the Iberian peninsula and Spain, where the word for "Fly" is "Mosca", and the diminutive of that is - "Mosquito".

Finally -

We've not had a giant Lego sculpture for a while, so Conrad did a little Googling and included the term "Monster" as a subject.  The results were rather disappointing, frankly, since a lot of them were actually Lego's "Monster Fighter" range, which is the opposite of what I wanted.  Then I tried "Godzilla", because he is formally known as "King of the Monsters", which was slightly more rewarding.  Art!

     Nothing to give it scale, unfortunately, though given the lack of precision in the face, I think this is relatively small with a low overall brick count.  Your Humble Artisan may come back to this subject when he's got more time to scout dark corners of teh interwebz.

     I did come across this -

     A LIFE-SIZE Godzilla being built on an island off the coast of Japan.  There has to be a joke in there somewhere ...  As yet no word on when the 400-foot monster is going to be available to scare the living daylights out of small children with sadistic and uncaring parents, though later this year is a good bet.  Doubtless you'll hear about it on the BBC website.

     And with that, we are O so very done!

*  Sorry to crush your nightmares.

**  It's never stopped me before.

***  They were all poisoned.