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.