A Monster Mix

Do Not Presume You Know What This Is About

Conrad can guess that you were expecting some witless nonsense about music, with a combination of tracks that someone else chose from their teenage years, back when they were least irrelevant.

     Here an aside: who are the target audience for those execrable collections of songs from the Fifties onwards?  It is sixty years since the Sixties; move on and listen to some contemporary sounds, you navel-gazing cemetery fodder!

Liable to get lethal blisters

     No, you over-expectant pikers, I am talking about "Pillboxes On The Western Front" thank you very much.  Peter Oldham - the author, not someone I picked at random, do keep up! - points out that the Teutons, in their quest to transform every square inch of occupied Belgium and France into a fortification, used hundreds of thousands of tons of reinforced concrete, necessitating the use of very large industrial plant.  Art!

     As you can see from the above, no lightweight machinery.  Before you ask, these fortifications were all part of the Hindenberg Line, being constructed miles in the rear, so they didn't need to worry about Perfidious Albion shelling the living daylights out of it.

     Allow me to show you a couple of photographs that Pete dug up to reveal what sly curs the Teutons were.  Art!

     In the upper picture you can see a row of houses, which have reinforced concrete bunkers concealed within themselves, allowing guns and crews to safely hide whilst being able to fire from behind cover.  The lower picture shows curious British soldiers having a nosy in the bunker itself, after the position had been captured.
     If you are wondering where the motley is today - it is having a lie down, because it didn't dodge anywhere near fast enough on the gladiator training machine.  Concussion and badly-bruised shins, thanks for asking.

Possibly motley shin.  Possibly not.

NASA Versus The Porch Pirates

Hopefully you remember Conrad's mention Mark Rober, the ex-NASA engineer who, having had a parcel stolen by 'porch pirates', decided to create the incredibly over-kill 'Glitterbomb' to catch other thieves out.  In fact he teamed up with the softly-spoken Irishman Jim Browning, computer whiz and expert in scamming the scammers, to track down the whole criminal network.  Art!

Mark, masked.  In fact, a masked avenger.  Yes, really.

     No pictures of Jim; he needs to operate in secret.

     The whole scam begins with a fake call centre in India calling elderly South Canadians, taking over their computer and bamboozling them about getting a refund from Amazon or where ever.  They ask the victim to type out how much they are being refunded, then over-ride this and add a couple of zeros.  In the case of one victim Jim was too late to help, this had gone from $200 to $20,000.  She was distraught, thinking that she'd miskeyed.

     No, madam, the shameless swindler at the other end of that phone call did the dirty deed.

     So, in order to level things out, the scammer tells their victim to just Fed Ex the balance in cash - $19,800 - to an address.  They want cash because it's much harder to track the movement of cash, and the address is an Air B'n'B rented for one day.

     However, it's not the scammer doing the renting.  They hire 'money mules' to make the rentals, go to the address and collect the Fed Ex'd package of money.  Art!

This one left empty-handed.  A victory for justice!

     Fortunately Jim and Mark got through to Fed Ex and requested that the package not be delivered, so the mule got stung this time.  And a second later in the picture above she looked right at the camera, so now the police know what she looks like.

     By this point both Homeland Security and the FBI are beginning to twitch their whiskers, but I don't want this post to be all about one topic, so we shall come back to this one.

What's That Smell?  It's Chesley Bonestell!

A gift of a surname if ever there was one.  Let us have a look at what our science fiction artist liked to imagine the future would look like.  Art!

     This is cheating a little, since it's actually a matte painting done for the final scene of "When Worlds Collide", that epic bundle of entertaining nonsense from the Fifties.  This is Lyra, sole planet of the rogue sun Bellus, which by this time has destroyed Earth (Booh!); conveniently enough, Lyra is just perfect for human beings to survive upon.  What a coincidence.  Never saw that one coming, did you?

     ANYWAY there are a couple of hints that Lyra either has or had it's own civilisation (which is explicit in the sequel novel "After Worlds Collide"). Look in the distance and you'll see two suspiciously symmetrical pyramids, and just at centre port is what looks like an artificial structure.  Subtly done, Mister Bonestell.

A Bit More Small Town South Canada

Yesteryon we introduced the 'found photography' of Daniel Freeman, a native of Perfidious Albion, whom has travelled something like 25,000 miles across the continent of South Canada recently, taking photographs of small towns after dark, and without any humans being present.  He finds this allows viewers to establish their own ambience.  Let's have another one.  Art!

     You can work out when he took this one, at least, in terms of the year.  He has also caught the rather charming birthday wishes being offered to a couple of folks.  The only clue to this being shot at night is the darker facade above the billboarding, because that cinema is going to let everyone know it exists.  Good job there's no domestic residences alongside; they'd never get to sleep.

Finally - 

Well, Your Humble Scribe finally sat down today and examined his works notebook (purchased with MY money), going all the way back to late August, and then made a tally of what work he did.  Biggest of all was Phones, coming in at 59 days allocation, and then Reports, coming in at 39 days allocated.  Which I had suspected yet never bothered to work out.  Not riveting stuff, I know, yet that which does not kill us makes us stronger.  Although Nietzsche definitely never had to deal with a hangover after a bucket of gin the night before.  Art!

Gin for the win

     With that, gentle readers, we are most definitely done!

Conrad - Is Bad

Of Course We All Knew That Already

I just wanted to cement my reputation for sheer maliciousness beyond all doubt.  

     Talking of cement, I am enjoying my "Pillboxes On The Western Front" by Peter Oldham, thanks for asking.  He covers the pillboxes of Perfidious Albion and the Teutons rather than anything by the Belgians, French or South Canadians - actually I'm not sure if the South Canadians constructed any such thing.  Art!

South Canadians wearing the British Brodie helmet, firing a French trench cannon

     No results from a quick Google.  I guess because when they arrived in early 1918 mobile warfare was in play, and in the summer there wasn't time to create an engineering infrastructure to build concrete fortifications, and in the autumn things had gotten mobile again.  Ol' Pete points out that one of the problems both sides had was creating a fortification undetected, because you can bet yer boots both sides were watching each other like hawks and a pillbox under construction in the front lines would have brought down instant retribution.  One solution was to build a concrete bunker inside an already present building.  Art!

Perfidious Albion exhibiting - perfidy

     Of course these get revealed if high explosive shells knock the camouflage off.  You can't win 'em all.

     Where were we? O yes, how horrid I am.  Over a couple of months I have been traducing the CW show "Batwoman" without watching it, which might bring condemnation to your lips were it not for the fact that I watch a couple of Youtube channels where reviewers risk their sanity by watching it; I don't have the sanes to spare.  Yesteryon I was pointing and laughing that the audience viewing figures had hit their lowest yet: 440,000.  This is lower than the number of viewers watching those channels roasting the show.  However, it was the raw, unadjusted data, and the adjusted figures are now out: 435,000 viewers, meaning that they lost just over 100,000 viewers in a week.  Art!

Roy BATTY.  
(Yes yes yes, he's a man, ignore that bit)

     One wonders what the break-even point of viewing figures is, and how long it will take to reach that in the four episodes left, and whether the vaunted (well, vaunted by the CW) third season will really happen.  Some commenters have lamented that other shows get cancelled with far higher viewing figures, whilst others <coughcoughConradcough> have posited that the whole thing is in fact a gigantic tax dodge.

     Meanwhile - bring on the buckets of popcorn!

     Motley - remember that gladiator training machine in "Spartacus"?  Did you ever wonder what would happen if it was attached to an electric motor?  Let's find out!

Conrad.  Is bad.

And Also VERY VERY ANGRY!

Yes, we are going on about a Codeword and it's solutions again.  SIT BACK DOWN! for my Remote Nuclear Detonator stands ever ready, and do you really want to be reduced to a cubic yard of meat-smelling vapour?  Needless to say all these came from a single Codeword and my Frothing Nitric Ire is such that I don't think we can fit them all into a single blog post.  Let us, then, with gritted teeth, commence the tally.

"ONYX": What!  WHAT?  Are we now supposed to be jewellers?  How fair is it in using letters 24 and 25 of the alphabet next to each other?  <pause for blood pressure to subside>

"OVOID":  What, now we're - no, no, you're thinking of Roman literature and the likes of Juvenal <sighs heavily> Art?

The poet OVID
(No disease jokes, please)

     No, what we are talking about here is a geometrical form, which if Art can put down his plate of coal -

Kinda eggy

     And doubtless derived from the Latin <hack spit> for "Egg" - "Ova".

"PHLEGM":  Come on, admit it, how many times do you ever read this word in casual writing or hear in casual conversation?  It was once supposed to be one of the four factors that created human personality.  There were <thinks hard> Phlegmatic, Choleric, Ascerbic and Mathematic 

     Or something.  The four 'humours' if you would, none of whom look like comedy material.  Nowadays, of course - indubitably! - it is used to refer to the hideous human by-product of having hacking lungs and breathing problems.

"American Diaries" By Sergei Sputnikoff

I finished this work yesteryon and it is both entertaining and hilarious.  If you want to see how someone from the Second World coped with Nineties South Canadian culture, this is the book for you.  Sergei points out one major, major difference between his homeland Ukraine* and South Canada: Americans smile a lot.  All the time.

Sergei smile-less

     As he put it, back home if a stranger came up to you smiling broadly, the first reaction would be to check your wallet was safe and second to wonder what scam they were trying to pull.  The camp director called him out over this lack of smiling, which Conrad thinks is vile cultural discrimination and (as someone whose face is not designed for smiling, either) feels your pain, comrade.

     One other thing that Sergei recounted was how the various inner-city kids,  from Chicago's poorer communities, all thought he sounded like The Terminator.  Given that he was 6' 3" and solid muscle from weight-lifting, and NEVER SMILED, this is a pretty fair judgement.

Sergei with puny human wall for scale

     The book is NSFW because there is swearing and sexual allusion, so not to be read by anyone under 18.  I have seen a Youtube clip of Sergei with his daughter, who seems as South Canadian as South Canadian can be.

Shall We Bonestell, Michelle?

The answer is "Yes" because HA! Michelle does not exist, and if she did there would undoubtedly be friction with Vulnavia, who can get a bit jealous at times.  The injunction is over and the charge of GBH was dropped to Common Assault, so she's good at the moment.  Art!

"Descent to the Moon, 500 miles below (1959)"

     Note how Ol' Ches has refined his 1951 ideation of moonships descending.  Here there is the Main Mission ship - instead of three identical ships - , which now has a streamlined and atmosphere-capable launch vehicle atop it, as this is how the astronauts are getting back to Earth.  In the background is a second stores ship, which will supply the mission once they both land.  He is getting ever closer to the real thing of July 1969 just ten years away.

Finally -

Were I to say "Freeman On The Land" you would probably quail with horror, since this is pretty close to the "Sovereign Citizen" loonwaffle where people try to weasel out of paying taxes, yet still get to experience all the civic amenities.

     Fear not!  For we have been here before.  British photographer Daniel Freeman travels the length and breadth of South Canada, taking evocative pictures of small-town America that Stephen King would love.  He has been doing this recently, making sure to avoid having people in the frame, for maximum mystery and atmosphere, so let's have one of his pieces.  Art!

     Worth tracking down.  Daniel, like Sergei, provides what Rabbie Burns once requested: "O wad some power the giftie gie us, to see oorselves as ithers see us."

     On which cryptic note we are well and truly done!

*  Conrad knew instantly where this was, unlike every single South Canadian.

Totally Rocking It

For This To Make Sense -

You need to have read yesteryon's blog, where we fell about laughing at something called the "Hi! Republic" in an iteration of "Starry Wars" (I think) as they introduced a Jedi who was a large, square lump of rock.  Going by the name of 'Geode' because that's a geological term, right?  Art!

Okay, rectangular.  Happy now?

     Of course Conrad could not simply leave it there, because he had to add in that Doctor Who did it earlier and better, with a side-order of Fritz Leiber.  Come to think of it, "Strontium Dog" in '2000AD' also had a race of humanoids made of stone, whose minds were unreadable even to the awesome Johnny Alpha.  

Top dog!

     Now that I want a picture, they cannot be found on teh Interwebz.  And I am NOT digging through nearly 2,000 comics to find a frame.

     ANYWAY I also wanted to examine Geode in further detail.  Given that Geode appears to be two cubic yards of basalt, one would feel confident in asserting that he, she or it weighs in the neighbourhood of two tons*.  How does Geode move?  "Very slowly" would be the answer, as I imagine lifeforms based on silicon dioxide cannot move rapidly.  Can Geode levitate?  Or does it smash up all the floors wherever it walks?  By "Walk" I mean it alternately swinging one side forward, then the other.  Does it require food and drink?  If so, what?  A gentle ray of sunshine or liquid plutonium?  Having no mouth, how does it communicate? 

A real geode

     Our stony friend would be much in demand if things went south and there was gunfire, being a natural bullet-proof shield able to shrug off any kind of small arms fire, even up to anti-armour weapons.  And we all know what he, she or it's favourite cinematic entertainment would be, don't we gentle readers ...

     Motley!  Time to break out the Chrome Canoes and have a punt on the Lava Lake**!

Going Batty

Mentioning that particular phrase reminds me of the "Uncle" stories by J. P. Martin, which Your Modest Artisan loved to bits as a much smaller version of himself many decades ago.  I think Batty was a villain, one of Beaver Hateman's crowd of crooks who infested Badfort, being a giant bat.  Conrad unsure if he can conjure up an image or not - Art! This cattle-prod stands ready!

     The Uncle novels are hilarious nonsense and I encourage you to read if at all possible, then you'll know if I'm raving about Batty or not.  I think it's eyes would glow in the dark.

     ANYWAY none of that has anything to do with "Batwoman", which is infinitely less entertaining and vastly more expensive, a kind of televisual money pit that The CW are content to allow to siphon away wheelbarrows of cash each week.  The viewing figure's downward slump was, incredibly and bizzarely***, reversed a couple of weeks ago.  Then reality intervened and the slide resumed.  And how.  Art!

     This is the 18 - 45 demographic expressed as "0.10" - in other words, the target audience they are aiming for.  And missing by a country mile.  "0.440" is the audience viewing figures in thousands, which last week stood at "0.536".  So they have lost 96,000 viewers in a week.  This is the lowest viewing figure the program has ever had, and we still have 4 episodes to run.  "How Low Can You Go?" takes on an interesting new meaning, as does the decision to greenlight a third season, because at this rate it will be into negative figures.

     As with the lyrics to "The Black Hit Of Space", by The Human League.  O, and do you know what?  These are the unadjusted figures, which may go even lower once revised, as I have seen occur in the past.

Back To Bonestell

Don't worry, there isn't an infinite number of paintings I can use, so we shall eventually run out and return to the fun topic of LITHIUM WAFER BATTERY DESIGN. What do you have for us today, Art?

"Mars as seen from Phobos (1954)"

     Phobos, lest you be unaware, is one of the two small, irregularly-shaped moons of Mars that are probably captured asteroids, since they never formed into a spherical shape.  The other moon is "Deimos", and a right pair they are - the Greek for "Fear" and "Panic".  What I wanted to do was set the scene, because when the VC's anticipate the Geek attack on Mars 

Art, you are neglecting to approve things.

     - excuse me, 2000AD is getting a bit above itself if it thinks it can just intrude like this.  What I meant to say is that Chesley had an interesting image of a manned Mars mission making planetfall on the Red Planet.  Art! <sound of a Tazer being charged>

     This is presumably one of the three delta-wing spacecraft that were assembled over Earth before transit to Mars - here we see the giant delta-wing side on.  Art!  Clarification picture, please.

     Hmmmm perhaps not so much delta as Heinemann's Hot Rod.  Which we may come back to at a later point.  Or not.  I can be wildly temperamental that way.

Mister Heinemann's Hawk Of The Sky
(No television jokes please)

  ANYWAY my point was that Chesley imagined an horizontal landing of the Mars spacecraft, whereas our robot explorers out there have all come in for vertical landings; this means that only a very small footprint needs to be viable terrain for the robot to survive.  If they were to come in for a landing akin to that of a modern jet aircraft, they would need possibly a couple of miles of suitable terrain.  Yes, it would look vanishingly cool - and result in robot explorer destruction 99 times out of 100.

Finally -

O hello Mister Balboa, can we help you with anything?  Do please step forward and make yourself known. 

"Yeah - about Geode.  I kinda thought - yannow - ah what the heck, good luck Frank." 

     Yes, Mister Balboa.  Truth, like the Moon, can be a harsh mistress.

Chin chin, pip pip and do svidaniya!

*  I don't care if it's the Republic, we're still using Imperial measurements.

**  There was an accident with the Lava Moat

***  And VERY VERY SUSPICIOUSLY 

The Tunnels Of DOOM

I Know, I Know

It sounds like a Doctor Who title from the Seventies, with the Doctor (Tom Baker iteration) and Sarah Jane trapped in the New York subway system as magma-monsters from the Earth's core wreak havoc on the city above ground -

     Except not.  One of these is only technically a tunnel.  And for the other, neither the M83s nor the Teutons are keen to have anything official to do with it.  Let's look at the latter first, because that's how we roll here.  Art!

     That pink underlined bit shows where the Teuton's Winterberg tunnel was.  It ran underneath a ridgeline for 300 yards and allowed movement without becoming highlighted or silhouetted whilst traversing the ridge.  The M83's knew all about it and, during the Nivelle Offensive in 1917, they put up a Caquot observation balloon to spot for artillery in order to hit it.  You know that unfunny joke about cheese-eating surrender monkeys?  It wasn't funny then, either.  Accurate fire from very large-calibre guns destroyed both the entrance and exit, trapping 270 hapless Teuton soldiers, of whom only 3 survived and got out.

When still accessible

     The sites of both entrance and exit were lost over time, until a local historian and his son worked out exactly where the tunnel was.  Well done the Malinowskis!  This means both the French and German governments are being forced to face an issue they'd rather not, because they get on reasonably well today and don't want the fuss and bother caused by dis-interring 270 skeletons clad in ragged uniforms, or allowing archaeologists to dig the site, or opening up graves in German war graves in France.  It would resurrect the First Unpleasantness when it's ghost has only just been laid to rest a century on.

     Then you have the disgusting bottomholes who will loot the whole thing for whatever they can plunder, the <long swear> jackals.  Which may well happen if it's not officially protected.

     An interesting world we live in!
     Motley, what would happen if we -

 - Stuck Your Head In A Particle Accelerator

"Nothing good" was my immediate response.  I had stumbled across a Youtube presentation by Kyle Hill, whom you may remember as the host of "Because Science" and who left the channel under mysterious circumstances.  More fool they, because I've not bothered to watch any more BS and am in fact uncertain if they still put it out.  Art!

Thor.  Or Kyle.  Take your pick.

     The presentation was titled "What happens if you put your head in a particle accelerator?" and you know Conrad, he cannot resist visiting anything with a title like that.

     The title is not merely rhetorical, because it really happened to a hapless Ruffian physicist, Anatoly Bugorski.  Essentially a string of bad things occurred to allow him to stick his head into a beam of protons; his work colleagues didn't shut the beam down in time, the room door was unlocked and the alarm light bulb had burned out (Sinister-era shoddiness at play).  Art!

     That proton beam was the end result of a particle accelerator in the Sinister Union, a monstrous piece of kit that was housed underground - hence me being allowed to call it a tunnel.  It whizzed sub-atomic bits around and around to just under the speed of light, then slammed them into stuff to see what happened.  Well, Anatoly happened.  He suffered serious side-effects initially, which were alleviated with treatment, and - did not die.  Not even a little bit.  

Behold the Tunnels of DOOM.
(With apologies to J.R.R.Tolkein)

     It turns out that the proton beam was so high-powered that it's terminal focus was well beyond the unfortunate physicist's head, so he got off light(speed)ly.  All of this was, of course - obviously! - covered up by the Sinisters, because heaven help us if news of this ever leaked out, why it might affect the pistachio harvest in the Sanjak of Novi Pazar*!  To date, this is the only known event where any member of Hom. Sap. has stuck their melon into a live stream of protons charged at 70 giga-electron volts.  Plus, now that the Sinisters and their inability to either manage health and safety properly, or have lightbulbs that last, have gone it is likely to be the only such occurence.

     I shouldn't have to say this, but the lawyers are cawing, so - DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME. You will not gain superpowers.  Alan Moore is a writer not a biologist.

Now We Have To Bonestell

Sorry, no alternative.  Okay today we go for an image that Ol' Ches painted in 1951, or, if you like, six years before the space age began, i.e. 1957 when the Sinisters launched Sputnik.  Art!

"Descending towards the Moon 1951"

     This is pretty prescient, as this attitude is what Apollo 11 adopted in 1969 on approach to the lunar surface: feet-first with the engine going full blast (though they throttled it back to preserve fuel and manoeuvrability).  Art!

Complicated shizzle

     NO there are no pictures of it happening, bafoons!  That would have required another, earlier lunar landing of at least automated camera equipment if not another LEM and associated crew.  I know the hoax loonwaffles will bray loudly about lack of evidence of same, just refer them back to Bonestell**.  Who seems to have over-estimated NASA's budget if they can afford to land THREE lunar probes simultaneously.

Finally -

We've just had the Moon up, as imagined a good 15 years before man actually walked there and discovered how ground-down everything was, after billions of years of meteor and cosmic ray erosion.  So, let us now have a look at the surface of Mars, as witnessed by the Perseverance rover.  Art!

     It undoubtedly looks akin to bits of Arizona or Utah, and you might expect to see John Ford doing a bit of filming (he had a pash for Monument Valley), except - no.  You would asphyxiate in the vanishingly thin Martian atmosphere, whilst also freezing to death in minutes thanks to the brisk ambient temperature of minus  1500C.  Perseverance does not have to worry about either issue, unlike soft, squishy human beings.  Also, the loonwaffles will have been out in force for this picture, pointing out 'OMH INCREDIBLE ALIEN ARTEFACKS!" proving that they are too excited to type properly and lack a spellchecker (also, brains).

I think with that last insulting shot we are well and truly done.  

*  I think it's now part of Serbia.

**  Then punch them.  Hard.

Look! A Flying Saucer!

Only Kidding

I had you going for a minute, though, didn't I?  Okay, back to our normally scheduled Sunday retrospective on this cold, windy, wet evening in March.  Even the seagulls out in it look depressed.  Don't forget, gulls, that this is March in Perfidious Albion and you'll not get warm weather until May, for two weeks, which will be our entire summer.  As Your Humble Scribe has often observed, being an island nation made a navy essential for the British, and the weather at home made conquering hot, sunny, dry foreign countries a priority.

     Right, preamble over, let us now deploy a picture that will ensnare the passing public by either tickling their sense of curiosity, or just tickling them.  Art!

     Conrad is pretty sure the artist here is Ron Turner as I recognise the style, but this is, after all, only supposed to be a throw-away item that doesn't require a substantive follow-up, so that's all I'm leaving you with, as we segue seamlessly into -

2020

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2020/03/cargo-go-cog.html

2019

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2019/03/farewell-for-few.html

2018

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2018/03/links.html

2017

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2017/03/whom-shall-we-insult-today.html

2016

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2016/03/conrad-is-cross.html

2015

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2015/03/apologies-for-delay.html

2014

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2014/03/under-whip-again.html

     Remember - Ambrose Bierce for President!

Am I Still Angry?

Indubitably!

About what?  Well give me a minute and I'll think of something.  There's an M.E.N. Codeword waiting to be done, which will surely prove worthy of a little rancour.  In the mea - actually, where does "Rancour" come from?  You know Conrad and etymology.  It sounds French and apparently derives from Old French and before that Late Latin, "Rancor", meaning "Rank" as in the sense of stinking to high heaven and not a set of pips on your epaulettes.  Art!

The 'Stinking Iris'
(Always tricky, trying to picture a scent)

     Where were we?  O yes, being furiously angry.  For one thing, I made reference to the word "Perpluie" last week, and now I cannot find any such word in my Collins Concise, nor are teh Interwebz much use either.  It seems to have it's roots in Latin - much like the Stinking Iris - and that's all.  Why did I mention a word that doesn't exist*?

     Moving on from that, Your Humble Scribe is also annoyed at the planning that has gone into not shifting the "Ever Given" from where it does not belong.  All this talk of tugs and dredgers and towing and mobile floating cranes - nonsense!  Utter balderdash!  What they - hmmmm, where does "balderdash" come from, one wonders? <we've covered this before so I shall merely remind about balls of soap being dashed about**>

Bald and dashing.  Close enough.

     ANYWAY as I was saying, what they need is a skyhook, which is to say an helicopter crane.  With the assistance of some slings and handy matelots, this particular bird would be able to lift pallets from atop the stranded ship and relay them to the canalside, immediately lightening the 'Ever Given' and allowing it to, if not float free, then float freer.  Art!

Proof I am not raving.
(Yet)

     That's a fifteen ton tank being ferried around there, meaning a palletised container wouldn't be a problem.  Conrad unsure if the Egyptian air force has any, though I think the Israelis might have ...

     Upon which mischievous note we will halt in order to allow the motley to ascend that third 50-rung ladder atop the two others.

Health and Safety the motley way

You Couldn't Make This Up

No, actually you could, it's just that nobody would believe you.  Conrad has absolutely no interest in following a particular iteration of "Starry Warz" (I think this is right but 1977 was a long time ago) which dubs itself "The Hi Republic" (again, third hand information) and which has suffered raw opprobrium being poured upon it from various Youtube channels.  People, it seems, hate it with quite as much passion as they hate "Batwoman", because in lockdown we all have opportunities to hate as much as we like (or is that "dislike"?).

     Anyway, allow me to introduce a - shall we say "character"? - from this ground-breaking series.  Art!

Bites tongue REALLY HARD

     Er - do I have to point out that it's the character to starboard?  Meet "Geode", whom is a Jedi rock.  And navigator.  Because sentient silicon deserves it's day in the sun.  Sentient rocks have cropped up in science fiction in the past - as background characters in Fritz Leiber's classic "The Wanderer", and that creepy children's program from the Seventies whose name I forget, and of course - obviously! - the BBC's premier dramamentary did it earlier and better in "The Stones Of Blood" with the Ogri versus Doctor Who.  Art!

Bites tongue EVEN HARDER

     Look at those two - a definite screen presence, and a touch of malice besides.  You wouldn't want to mess with them.  Geode frankly a chump in comparison.

Finally -

No, this is not the last item in today's blog, more an expostulation (not a word you ever expected to see today, nicht wahr?) of happiness that my next book purchase has arrived, and if I can just waken Art with the fish-fork -

     The title explains it all.  Young Sergei grew up under the Sinisters in Ukraine, and experienced the havoc when they collapsed and Ukraine got genuine independence.  In 1995 he got the opportunity to travel to Michigan in South Canada and work at a camp there that recruited counsellors and specialists globally.  Faced with the prospect of working with hundreds of squealing inner-city black kids from Chicago, he managed to dodge the bullet and was the camp's photography specialist.  As he openly admits, a much easier option.  It's also an eye opener as to the differences between Ukrainian and South Canadian lifestyles; admittedly this was twenty-five years ago, so Ukraine will have caught up somewhat now they're not being ruled by Ruffians <DANGER DANGER POLITICS CREEPING IN AVOID AVOID AVOID!>

Sergei with a fan

     There will now be a pause as I travel into Babylon-Lite and see what's going cheap at the Co-Op.  

     Forty-five minutes later I have returned (timed well with buses)

Another Book I Am Reading

"Pillboxes On The Western Front" by Peter Oldham, because I can read multiple books at the same time and not get confused, multi-tasking as I see it.  Anyway, Ol' Pete has spent a lifetime in the construction business, and he knows his concrete.  He also points out that the original Teuton name for pillboxes was the unwieldy-yet-definitely-Teutonic "Mannschafts Eisenbeten Unterstande" which the stubble-hoppers in the front lines shortened to "MEBU".  Art!

British tourists only giving a single star

     He also points out that the Dutch did some very questionable selling of aggregate to the Teutons, and allowing it to be shipped via their rivers and canals, and sold on British cement that they bought as an intermediary - all of which went to construct MEBUs, none of which was allowed by treaty, however ££££.

Finally - 

Yes, the real thing this time, the last item.  Once again I have taken up that wargames rules set, "Blitzkrieg Commander" and am re-reading them to familiarise myself with the finer details.  Art!

     In the time elapsed since I bought them, they have themselves been bought, by Pendraken Miniatures, so Conrad ought to beetle over there and see if they have any scenarios for the Desert Unpleasantness of 1940 - 1942.  Otherwise I see an encounter battle between Babini Group and the Royal Droghedras in the near future ...

     And with that, we are done!

*  Because I'm me.  Tautology defined.

**  That, or it's Icelandic.