Still Sticking With That Briny Theme
If you have a memory greater than that of a goldfish, then you will recall we have recently been recounting the hydration horrors the Crimea is undergoing, thanks to Ukraine cutting off 85% of their water supplies. Ukrainian politicians pointed out that, if Crimea is now Ruffian, then the Ruffians can supply it with utilities, which includes water. And they can't. Art!
As you can see, the howling irony is that Crimea is almost entirely surrounded by the wet stuff, which, being saltwater, isn't either drinkable or usable for agriculture. It is, however, custom-made for ships to sail upon, including HMS 'Defender' whose partial track you can witness above. The Defender looks pretty frakkin' alli, at least to a landlubber like Conrad - Art!
Confounding naval strengths since the sixteenth century
The sudden arrival of a Royal Navy warship off the Crimean peninsula inevitably provoked a whole series of clucking objections from the Ruffians, because it - I dunno, imperilled the pistachio harvest in the Sanjak of Novi Pazar? In fact, the Defender was travelling in international waters, but the Ruffians don't like other people using their own tactics against them, and the Defender was essentially trailing her coat as bait.
Because the Ruffians absolutely cannot and will not accept coming second in anything ever - and we are going back a hundred years now for this phenomena - they had to put out a story of how they fired on the Defender and dropped bombs in front of her, and probably called up a dragon from the sea armed with laser eyes whilst using ill-tempered sea bass with contact mines welded to their heads, and - you get the picture. None of which happened. There are crews of journalists aboard the Defender - gosh! it's almost as if the RN expected something newsworthy to happen at sea on this cruise! - who all reported nil events occurring. There was gunfire: twenty miles away, from a live-fire exercise being carried out by the Ruffian navy. Perhaps their poor seasick journalists got it completely wrong?
Russia attacks!
(An artist's impression)
One wonders what course HMS Defender will be taking when she returns to home waters. Exciting times ahead!
Motley, I think we can roleplay this. You get on a surfboard in the swimming pool and I'll throw hand-grenades at you. Yes yes yes, you can wear armour, just be careful about the weight.
Still Somewhat Watery
Conrad is wary of large bodies of water, as you never know what's lurking at the bottom of them; U-boats, dragons, piranhas, Aquaman. Other folk are considerably braver (it's not hard) and are willing to venture o'er the salty seas in various manner of craft; you can see one of the more extreme versions above. Then you have the vehicles at the other end of the spectrum. Art!
This, apparently, is known as an 'e-foil', which is completely novel to Your Humble Scribe. It may look like an optical illusion but is entirely real, and the relevant bits are invisible underwater, being what enables it to scoot along and remain upright. Art!
Yes yes yes I know it looks like an ironing board and a scuba set had a baby. Hold onto your hat, as this humble item can reach speeds of 30 knots. One heck of a lot faster than you can swim.
It may amuse you - or not, I don't really care, I'm horrid like that - to know that I've been listening to Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf" whilst hammering the keyboard and making Dimya cry about the Crimea*.
Would You Like Some "T"?
I know what you're thinking, "How can Conrad possibly ask that question, since he imbibes tea as other people inhale the very air?" and you're not wrong. Except in this case we are talking about the letter, not the drink. Art!
Do not fret or worry, gentle reader, because Conrad has absolutely no interest in whatever sport is being described here - motorised roller-skating? - and thus has not changed his opinion on sports one bit - rideable rocket racing? - in that for all he cares you can walk onto the stadium floor and - aha! supermarket trolleys propelled by rockets! - flip a coin to determine the outcome. No, what I wanted to point out was the region this event is taking place at: "Styria". This is one of the provinces of Austria. "Austria" itself is an Anglicisation of "Österreich" meaning "Eastern State", not to be confused with "Australia", which comes from the Latin for "South", that being "Austral".
Sorry, where were we? O yes - Styria. Art!
Doubtless there will be a whole lot of people looking confusedly at their television screens as thöse supermarket trolleys whiz around the track, exclaiming "I thought that place was dangerous? And flat? And hot? And dusty?" Well, puzzle no longer, people, for BOOJUM! has addressed your questions.
O hang on! They were motor racing cars!
If I Were To Say "Locks"
You might expect an item on hairdressing, or how to pick one with a hairclip and <information redacted> or even the water management of a canal system.
All these would be wrong, of course - obviously! - because I refer to "Lox", which itself is rather ambiguous. There is the sense you may well have heard already, it being smoked salmon, frequently consumed on a bagel with cream cheese, and thankfully I ate not long ago so am not now being consumed with the pangs of greed. Art!
Very kosher
This is Lox #1. Then there is Lox Iteration 2. Art!
Yup. If you were to be eavesdropping on the launchpad, as another NASA maintenance mission goes off to service the Moon Holograph Generator, you'd see containers of LOX being ferried about, as having oxygen under such pressure that it forms a liquid means you can cram oodles of the stuff into a small space.
I shouldn't have to say it, but - do not confuse the two.
Finally -
I've been shockingly lax in watching "Ad Astra" because I've got access to Netflix again on a laptop that doesn't crash every couple of hours, hooray! so I've finished watching the first series of "Locke And Key", done a bit of a hatchet job on "Army of the Dead" and watched "Overlord", the horror-war-zombie film from 2018 which we WILL come back to. O yes indeed.
But for the moment, we are DONE!
* "Dimya" is the familiar diminutive of "Vladimir" and should only be used by his very bestest mates, most certainly not by a disrespectful British blogger.
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