Getting Stoned

Yes, I Realise That's Ambiguous

Why do you think I wrote it?  Yes, there is the sense of a positively Biblical punishment, either being suffocated by a door being placed upon the victim guilty party, which is then weighed down with stones, or simply pelting someone with stones until their exsanguinated carcass lies in jelly-boned disarray.  Art!

     Of course your filthy minds IMMEDIATELY sprang to the drug reference, didn't they? because of your positively perverted psyches.  Presumably it is used because these illegal substances replicate the experience of having large solid lumps of silicon dioxide impact your cranium.  And no, you don't get a photo.  NSFW don't you know.  Art!

Very very true, I'm afraid

     ANYWAY that has little to do with Harvey Fite, who was neither a six-foot rabbit nor a soldier.  He was, in fact, a sculptor, who - sculpted.  A South Canadian, don't you know, who bought up an abandoned bluestone quarry in 1938 and whom decided to live there.  As proof of his innate talent with materials, he built his own wooden house.  Art!

     One presumes he had help.  Not satisfied with this, he later turned to making the whole quarry an artwork; you couldn't really call it an 'installation' because it was already there, all 12 acres of it.  He christened the whole thing 'Opus 40' because he anticipated spending 40 years completing it, solo.  As mentioned once a couple of years ago, this now makes sense of some Mercury Rev lyrics from over two decades ago: Art!

Well, a little sense

     Let's have a look at this garden of earthly delights.  Art!

With puny humans for scale

     The large standing stone you see there weighs nine tons, and Ol' Harv got it into position by himself, using traditional methods (levers, pulleys, inclined planes, etcetera) rather than anti-gravity or aliens, just as he managed all the other masonry work.

     Rather tragically, he never lived to see it finished, as he drove his motor-mower over a small cliffside and was fatally injured.  We shall spurn the mocking tone of the Darwin Awards, where I first encountered information about his demise.  Yes, the cliff was only 12 feet high, but at this point in 1976 Ol' Harv was 72 years old.  Art!

The chap had a vision, you can't deny it

     I can hear the motley in the next room cruelly mocking stoners.  Cooee, Motley, I have a nasty surprise for you!

Conrad Is ANGRY! (Yes Again)

It doesn't take much.  For one thing, there's far too much coverage of that elitist nonsense the Olympic Games; Conrad refuses to have anything to do with them until they include Bog Snorkelling and Pylon-Spotting as competitive events.

     ANYWAY why am I seething and gnashing with rage?  O the usual, Codeword solutions.  Without further finagling -

"GAZEBO": Defined as 'a summer house, pavilion or belvedere, believed to originate in the eighteenth century as pseudo-Latin, based on 'gaze'.  Really, why can't we just use 'summer house' instead?  I think one is mentioned in "The Kraken Wakes" and, gosh, there was a Reddit on Youtube where a Home Owner's Association forced one to be moved slightly.  Art!

     And that's your lot.  

"BELVEDERE": No, only joking, not going there -

"PISTIL": NO!  Not a mistake about a revolver.  Dear me, do get your basic biology right.  The female reproductive bits of a flower, for your information.  You can imagine how puzzled Conrad was before solving this one. Art!

WHAT ARE WE ALL EXPERT BOTANISTS NOW OR WHAT?  WHAT WHAT!

Codeword compilers beware

"FETA": This is another of those worrying foreign foods that the compilers keep resorting to in order to be tricky and edgy and intellectual (they fondly imagine!).  It is the national cheese of Greece and is very nicely done when battered and deep fried as Saganaki.  Art!

Delicious and also very, very bad for you

     BUT IT HAS NO PLACE IN AN ENGLISH CODEWORD DOG BUNS!

     I think that's enough tanting for one night.  Besides, merely the sight of that Saganaki has made my blood pressure rise.

Conrad - Still Angry (But About A Completely Different Issue)

We have, of late, been whanging on about how a Roman legion would fare under a zombie attack -

     Here an aside.  I have rather assumed that these are the traditional slow zombies, rather than the Olympic sprinters with an intravenous amphetamine sulphate drip version.  Just so we're clear.

     One area I wanted to cover was fixed defences, beginning with ditches, and I recalled from many decades ago that the Romans allegedly used what were nicknamed "Punic" ditches, Punic for the Romans having an air of treachery about it*.  The ditch started well away from any defensive rampart, sloped downwards very gradually and then had an abrupt sheer face; the idea being that attackers didn't notice they were in a ditch until up against it.

     Well, could I find any mention of or diagrams about this type of ditch?  No I could not!  Conrad is beginning to suspect it was completely apocryphal and never really existed.  Let us console ourselves with pictures of genuine Roman ditches.  Art!

All it lacks is barbed wire and a machine-gun or two

They Finally Did It

Conrad told them months ago and they've only just got round to taking my suggestion seriously.  No!  This is nothing to do with my "Burger President" suggestion that will earn me millions in royalties - I refer, of course - obviously! - to "We Have Ways" and their podcast's premium picture, which, if Art will stop guzzling coal -

     Not very sharp in terms of detail because it's a tiny original picture.  Al looks less like a baked potato, he feels, whilst Jim declared himself 'quiff-tastic'.

     Told you so.  Incidentally, I do have a backlog of their recent podcasts to listen to.  Perhaps later tonight whilst tackling a Cryptic or two.

<sighs> No, Art, not a 'cryptid'.

Finally -

Okay, we need to tidy this up and send it to bed, because I have tomorrow's lunch to sort out and possibly try out that cheap plastic omelette maker, which I bought weeks ago, and which has now been given a first clean, thus having the instructions on it's wrapper long since discarded.  Conrad, cunning as ever, merely re-read same on the ones on the shelves at Food Warehouse.  If The Mansion burns down overnight then you'll know I missed something.

*  Entirely un-earned, I assure you, more a case of projected guilt.