You Know How It is
One gets accustomed to the normal and repeated flow of events, such as the negotiators pleading with you not to burn down an orphanage again - and then along comes an event that causes reality to generate a blip and suddenly those orphanages are hale and whole again. Well, almost exactly the same thing happened to Your Humble Scribe, thanks to Ann Reardon and "How To Cook That". Art!
Jason vs. the Hydra: an artist's impression
This is, naturally, what you expect when any mention of "Hydra" comes up, unless you've been watching one too many episodes of "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." in which case Agent Coulson will be having a word with you.
ANYWAY, Ann was debunking another piece of video vomit from Five Minute Crafts, which ought to do the decent thing and call itself Five Minute Shafts, where they claimed that, if you applied sellotape to your forehead - Art!
- and then put the tape under a microscope, you would be able to witness a horrifying panoply of micro-organisms that dwell upon your skin. Art!
This is so blatantly NOT the tape that was used that Conrad's facepalm did a facepalm. These are aquatic micro-organisms that dwell in water, definitely not upon the human face. Conrad recognised that one in the middle as Daphnia, also known as the 'water flea'. Ann, despite her disclaimer about not being a biologist, named all these squirmy objects, including - Art!
So! I can announce today with considerable gusto and pleasure that Conrad's posterior is fang-free. So far. We know from experience that the Universe is always waiting to spring horrid surprises, the dirty cur.
Excuse me, I have to go check on my laundry. Will the excitement never start*!
O Memory
What you do to me. You may well know by now that Conrad frequently ends up not just down the internet rabbit hole, but down a tangential rabbit hole off a tangential rabbit hole from the original rabbit hole. Holey rabbits!
Thus we come to <cue appropriate thunder and lightning> "Eldritch Theatre" which I for one had never heard of. It appears to be a live theatre in Toronto, British America, which does horror plays that involve puppetry. I think if I cattle-prod Art into wakefulness -
No, I have absolutely no idea what's going on here.
The reason I stumbled across them was because I had gotten up a list of actors in a particular film, one of whom was down as Colonel Whoever, and - this must have been in Wiki - hovering over his name brought up the fact that he was a British American actor involved with the ET.
Here an aside. Nobody else on planet Earth in all it's long and illustrious literary history ever used the word "Eldritch" but H.P. Lovecraft. They chose that title deliberately to make an association with horror and the Cthulhu Mythos.
ANYWAY
The thing is, I cannot now recall who the actor was who brought all this about. Conrad can remember that his character was a colonel, acting as military liaison between the South Canadian military and <great big mental gap> whom ends up getting a bit of extreme prejudice termination.
It'll come back to me. Give Conrad a month or two.
Back To That Turrety View
The original quiz occurred waaaay back in June, so these answers are nothing like spoilers, right? If you feel like a challenge, and I mean a genuine challenge about military history, because The Viewer does not pander, then his Youtube channel goes under:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Nl_1_suJxw&t=228s
That's a link to the questions, which are supplied without answers. Let us now have the questions and Conrad's extensively-researched answers.
Q9) Which river did the solo Roman warrior hero Horatius seek to defend?
A) This is one of the two questions where I knew the answer without having to check - the River Tiber. It's from a poem <hack spit> if my little grey cells are functioning correctly.
"No entry without tickets!"
The poem itself is a paean (if we can borrow a Greek word) to the manly virtues and self-sacrificial determination of all the best Roman qualities, despite it being of very dubious provenance. What's that saying? Which sells better, the truth or a headline?
Q10) Prince Bagration was mortally wounded in which battle?
A) First of all, don't snigger at the name. This sounds a lot better in Ruffian, since this is what he was, and check out the surname 'Pine-Coffin' before you get on your Surname Superiority High Horse.
By this preamble you may have guessed that I don't know the answer. The Prince was active in the Napoleonic wars, so at a guess I would say Borodino, the apocalyptic battle before Moscow in 1812. Let us now cheat and check -
Bring back the Prince
I was correct, mortally wounded at Borodino, died a couple of weeks later. In fact he was Georgian, one of the Tsarist provinces, rather than a Ruffian. He knew his military onions and there's probably a Sinister screed from the Second Unpleasantness about the connection between the Great Patriotic War of 1812 and that of 1941 -
Which is venturing dangerously close to politics.
The bath of blood at Borodino
Currently Watching -
"How I Became A Superhero" on Netflix, a French film about the near future, where people with superpowers have evolved and live alongside you us, and inevitably some people become dirty curs and carry out criminal activity. Enter our heroes, a couple of cops. Art!
That's officer Moreau at the front, whose principal character trait is gorging on cheap sweets all the time AND I HATE HIM ALREADY THANKS TO DIABETES <ahem> no, not really, it's just that they taunt and tease and tempt over - OVER WHAT I CAN NEVER HAVE -
Which is not the issue. By default Netflix has been playing the dubbed version, which jibs a bit when one of the characters mentions " - six to seven yards" in FRANCE, HOME OF THE METRIC SYSTEM.
Sorry, I do seem to be using upper case rather a lot, don't I?
There is an option to play in French, with subtitles - NOW TH - sorry - now they tell me, 40 minutes in!
Finally -
Don't forget, Ambrose Bierce for President! A man so thoroughly steeped in cynicism and bile, with a background in the military - I'm telling you, he's your man!
* Probably not, thank heavens.
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