Also Stomach
Your Humble Scribe didn't imagine that there is a niche for vloggers who do, actually, for real, cook food with lava. Yet I have now discovered that such things exist. Truly Hom. Sap.'s enterprise, caprice and sheer foolishness know no limits. Let us set the scene: Marcum Crater in Vanuatu, which is a seething pit full of molten rock. Art!
Now, the very first thing that would come to mind looking at this would be, of course - obviously! - roasting marshmallows over it. At least in some people's minds it would be the first thing, rather than the more usual "DANGER! DEVIL HOTNESS! AVOID". Enter Simon. Art?
Apparently nothing did, as both Simon and his camera-buddy came out intact, but you must admit hearing both "Beer" and "Volcano" in the same sentence does not bode well.
ANYWAY that has very little to do with what I wanted to open this Intro with, which was a case of entitlement, stupidity and vengeance delivered via what has been described as "like eating molten lava".
Allow me to introduce the 'Carolina Reaper' chilli pepper. Art!
Not exactly prepossessing, is it?
For many years this has been the hottest chilli pepper in the world, with a peak Scoville rating of 2.2 million; your average Cayenne pepper, for comparison, is a mere 50,000 Scoville's. Pepper spray is rated at 5 million. And there appears to be a competition by growers to come up with even hotter peppers than the Reaper.
Let us now return to the meat of the matter, a Reddit post where Original Poster related how some greedy, lazy, entitled food thief at work stole someone's lunch every day instead of bringing in their own; we shall call them GLEFT. Every day someone would open the office fridge to find their lunch gone and GLEFT looking smug and full. When OP's pot pie was stolen she reached breaking point. She didn't detail but said her cultural background involved lots of hot and spicy food, so she was well-used to mealtimes being high on the Scoville scale. She then made a stew, using three Carolina Reapers, making sure to cook it for hours and hours, because that way all the spicy goodness permeates the stew O so well. Even she found eating it a bit of a stretch, getting the sweats and watering eyes. Art!
Know your enemy
She took it into work for lunch every day, and do you know what? One lunchtime it vanished, and GLEFT was off work sick for several days with acute stomach problems. He then had the gall to have her up in front of HR for trying to poison him, at which point he had to admit stealing her lunch and eating it, at which further point HR told him to get stuffed; if he was going to steal people's food, he could suffer the consequences. GLEFT didn't steal food again, probably because i) he feared being 'poisoned' again and ii) HR probably told him another theft and he's gone via Gross Misconduct. A very satisfying outcome!
Oh, and the name of the chap who bred the Carolina Reaper? Ed Currie, I kid you not.
Er - only if you have a copper stomach, folks
The motley is currently skulking around in disguise and generally keeping a low profile, as fans of The Skreeming Voles (remember them?) took it especially badly when it used live critters for it's game of Whack-A-Vole.
THIS IS NOT A TANK!
You should recall Conrad's fervid criticism of the BBC recently, when they wrongly described an amphibious troop-carrier as a "Tank". It seems that Your Humble Scribe has been harping on about this before, for I came across an old post dedicated to the subject.
https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2014/05/thats-not-tank.html
I'm not going to copy-and-paste because it's nearly 700 words long. Yes, that's all I was aiming for in terms of would count. Mind you, it was 7 years ago.
The one responsible for it all
And we're already up to that now.
Hindsight: With 20/20 Vision
No, nothing about old posts from years ago. Rather, I want to analyse some of the contemporary images and captions from that wartime publication "The War Illustrated", because we now know a whole lot more than they did at the time. The first issue is dated June 1942, and if noble Art can put down his bowl of coking coal ...
This is an interesting collection of photographs taken during the Battle of Gazala, which is one of those where the British generals at the top managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. At top is a shattered Panzer Mk IV (you can tell from the short chunky barrel and blast deflector) and the spectators are standing much too close, because if there's unexpended ammunition inside that blazing hull ...
Then next down we can see Free French troops, and you can tell they're FF because those portees are mounting the distinctive 25mm AT gun that the French used. By this time only marginally effective against tanks unless at point-blank range. We have actually covered this gun in some detail after "Forgotten Weapons" got their hands on a working version. Art!
Then we have the despondent General Cruewell, shot down whilst tootling about in a scout plane, getting out of a Dingo scout car. From scout to scout, watch the General climb out*.
And lastly, a group of Grant tanks, dubbed "Egypt's Last Hope", which were an unpleasant surprise to the Axis, as they could stand off and shell from previously unheard-of distances. High-explosive shell, too, which immediately made being an Axis anti-tank gunner a much dicier occupation.
Finally -
What a wet and miserable Bank Holiday! It's more like February than May. I also have to get some supplies from the Co-Op later on and do NOT fancy trudging into Royton a.k.a. Babylon Lite for washing-up liquid and bread. Perhaps I shall cheat and - go by car! <gasps of horror in the background>. O an addendum; on Saturday I went into the charity shops to look for a certain breed of DVD and came up empty-handed. All the ones on offer were contemporary things from the Nineties at the earliest. When what Conrad wanted were sci-fi films from the Fifties and Sixties <sad face>. I might just have to break down and <shudders> buy some.
Royton of old
And with that we are done done done!
* I made this up all by myself. Can you tell?
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