This Is Going To Take Some Explaining
Hopefully you didn't have anything else planned for the immediate future? O good. We shall then proceed.
First of all, we shall be taking a rest from ceaseless yarking on about matte effects, although in the context of what I write, Matt - Matt Helm, that is - might also be an option. You young whippersnippers out there won't have any idea what I'm talking about but I'm on a schedule here with a deadline so we shall just have to come back to it later. Art!
Kissy Suzuki and James Bond
In reality the James Bond nickname "Mister Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" is Italian in origin, which we will instead ignore completely, because it's my blog and I say so.
What I wanted to inculcate (another of those words you never expected to see today) was a sense of Japan being a friend of the Western powers, which we can also extend to Australia. You know, the Ockers, a tribe of European extraction for the most part, who have settled in the country that tries to kill you on a regular basis. For Lo! we are back to the Official History of the Gallipoli campaign, and Anzac Cove. By June the conflict between the Ockers, the Polite Australians and the Turks had resulted in trench warfare every bit as unpleasant as that taking place in Europe. With armies of flies. And a shortage of water. Art!
"Lieutenant Cuthbertson doffed his fly-screen to light a cigarette, the flame keeping flies at bay."
One advantage the Turks had was in their plentiful supply of hand-grenades, known colloquially to the British and Dominion troops as 'bombs'. Your Humble Scribe doesn't have time to do proper research on this, yet suspects that these would have been supplied by the Teutons and would thus have been of the "Steilgranate" or "Potato-masher" variety. The British and Anzacs had to make do with 'jam-tin' bombs, literally made out of an empty jam-tin, with a bit of gun-cotton and scrap iron as the lethal part, and a short fuse. Needless to say these improvisations were as dangerous to the user as the enemy, and only came in small amounts. Art!
Killer Kalories
Please bear in mind that in the First Unpleasantness the Japanese were actually allies of the Allies, carrying out some minor military operations against distant Teuton settlements in the Far East (which was the Very Very Near East to the Japanese) and lending their considerable naval strength to overseas operations. More pertinently, they also supplied four trench mortars to the Anzacs in May of 1915. Art!
You oughter mortar
Mortar normally cements constructions together; these did the opposite, lobbing a 30 pound bomb into the Turkish trenches, to the utter discomfiture (yes yes yes another word you never expected to see today) of those on the receiving end. The merry hell that the Turks experienced was only brought to a halt when the mortar ammunition ran out. Art!
You might want to cock that up a bit, chaps ...
So there you have it, when East and West were in harmonious communication about explosive demarcation, in the summation of hyperbolic detonation.
Motley! We've dealt with the Spitting Devil's Cabbage, do we have anything on file about Blade Runner Beans?
Meanwhile, In Angryland -
Your Humble Scribe aspires to get a copy of either the Manchester Evening News or the Oldham Times daily, because that way he gets to tackle a Cryptic Crossword and a Codeword, which helps to keep his wits sharp. I have absolutely no interest in the news content, let it be hastily added. And O My! they are a source of material for the blog, and then some. Were I to cease solving the Codewords I'm sure my blood pressure would recover, but it would also mean a positive desert of source material. For example -
"HOYDEN": Conrad knew this one because he's read a lot of historical literature which mentions same. "A wild boisterous girl" defines the Collins Concise. Well, yes, except it went out of use when Charles Dickens died. "Tomboy" is the contemporary equivalent. Art!
Still technically SFW
"VETCH": No! Not the Latin derivation from the Greek "Vex". This is a species of climbing plant, apparently. Art!
Fetch Vetch
It is edible, if barely, and Hom. Sap. only resorted to eating the vetch when there was nothing else, for the vetch doth make retch*.
"BLAZONED": Excuse me? Okay, this means describing a coat of arms or similar in formal heraldic terms, you know, "Fess argules with lion rampant" kind of stuff. In fact the chap mentioned in the Intro has a line that's relevant here ...
James Bond : Now, when we authorize a coat of arms, it can include all sorts of funny things: crescent moons, portcullis, beasts, cochons, rampants, bars, bezants.
Nancy : Please, what is bezants?
James Bond : Gold balls. I brought a book on the subject with me. There's a picture of my own coat of arms, actually - which includes four of them. If you'd care to see them.
We shall draw a cloak of NSFW o'er the rest of this repartee.
A bevy of birds and Bond
Enough of what makes my blood pressure rise!
Euphemisms For 'Stupid'
This was the title on a Youtube Reddit channel that I've not yet had the chance to read, though I doubt my examples feature there. My first one is used of Edward VII, whom I remember from my History degree course as being an utter numpty who would have made an excellent monk, were he not King of Perfidious Albion. He was described as being " - that useful political vegetable" because whoever wanted to usurp power in the land only had to whisper in his ear and he would loudly bray their message. Art!
"I'm a potato."
(Yes, you have a peel)
Then there was another comment, which I cannot remember applied to whom, nor from where it came, except it described a particular European monarchy as being " - but lightly endowed with intellect", which I thought was hilarious. And very probably true. We may come back to this, for Conrad loves a creative insult or two**.
Finally -
The jigsaw proceeds apace. There seems to be a total of five edge pieces missing, which might well prove to be that Conrad ham-fistedly missed them whilst sorting through the 1,000 pieces. Or they might really be missing, this being a risk of charity-shop bought jigsaws. Art!
Only another 880 pieces to go. You will, inevitably and unapologetically, get progress reports on this as it gets completed. I bet you can hardly wait***.
* It probably doesn't, but are you going to eat some to challenge me?
** Or twenty
*** This, South Canadian readers, is irony. So now you know.
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