Like The Charge Of An Electron

Conrad Is Markedly Consistent

Perhaps because, at his age, he is resistant to change and is thus predictable, even being guilty of fuddy-duddyness.  You can definitely bank on him having porridge for breakfast, drinking loose-leaf Darjeeling tea and flying into the most frightful rages imaginable at the merest of reasons.

     Why, you enquire, did I allude to sub-atomic physics?  Because it's one of the crucial plot points in "The Quiet Earth", as scientist Zac Hobson discovers that basic constants in the physical world are fluctuating, including the charge of the electron, which ought to be more stable and predictable than the sun rising tomorrow.  Art!

Definitely not in Kansas any longer ...

     It's a great post-apocalyptic film from the Polite Australians and Conrad gives his thumbs-up, so feel free to hunt it down.
     And so we come to Conrad's Frothing Nitric Ire.  Yes, we are back on the subject of Codewords again SIT BACK DOWN! and we have a lovely long list for you to endure enjoy.  I won't post the whole lot here today as this would be far too much of a good thing, or at least a thing.

"What?  Where!"

     No, Mac, no.  Look, the neighbours need help with their barbecue, can you help?

     <sigh> heart's in the right place - at least it is if he's still human - but a little eager with that flamethrower.

     ANYWAY 

"SKULKED": That's what Mac did when he departed The Mansion; 'to move stealthily so as to avoid notice' and how often do you hear it used?  Very rarely indeed, and most of the time it would be in the electronic pages of this self-same blog.  I still take umbrage at it, mind.  O, and it also used to be the collective noun for a group of foxes, which diverted my rancour momentarily.  Art!

"CHI":  There are two definitions of this in my Collins Concise AND BOTH MAKE ME FURIOUSLY ANGRY!  <short pause to allow blood pressure to fall>

     In the first it refers to the twenty-second letter of the Greek alphabet, which, if Art will get off his coal-fattened rear -

The spot

     WHAT, DO THEY ASSUME WE ALL WENT TO PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND LEARNED GREEK ALONGSIDE LATIN!  Then we have the second definition, which refers to a mythical form of energy running through the body (like brandy?) and which is taken directly from the Chinese for 'energy'.

     THIS IS TOO MUCH!  NOW WE NEED TO BE FLUENT IN CHINESE AS WELL  AS GREEK?!

     Conrad is certain you feel his pain.

"OSTIA": What?  What!  We've already had Greek and Chinese, and now they bring up a neighbourhood in the city of Rome.  Art!

     How can they resort* to behaviour this low?  What's next for heaven's sake - SHEREMETYEVO?  CESKE BUJEHOVICE?  TRUTH AND CONSEQUENCES?  All real places, by the way.

     I give up, my blood pressure can't take it.  Your Humble Scribe requires a soothing nitromethane cocktail.  Motley!  Break out the bomb-proof cocktail shaker.

Ah, I see the life-giving rains have started once more.  Our dry, parched savannahs will be grateful after all these weeks of drought - no, hang on, that's nonsense, isn't it?

"Rhabdomancy"

Speaking of water any myths - CHI, do keep up! - Conrad looked up this word, which he casually threw into a Facebook post and which absolutely nobody challenged him on, which means people must trust me**.  It is the formal name given to attempting to divine where things are underground, by means of a pair of rods.

     <loud sounds of Tazer being applied repeatedly and with great force>

     BY MEANS OF A PAIR OF RODS

     All utter nonsense, of course.  When tested experimentally rhabdomancers scored no more highly than chance, and who needs a diviner to look for water here in the Pond Of Eden?  You'll hit the water table within inches at present if you take a shovel to it.

     O I say, the skies are clearing.  One wonders what the conquering Roman legions thought of this country and it's weather back in the day.  Speaking of which ...

Last Ditch Defences

Roel Konijndijk would approve of this title and the article which follows.  In case you forgot, he's the Irish classical history expert who sat in judgement on how accurate various films set in the ancient world were.  Art!

     That's Roel preventing his head from exploding with horror at how incredibly inaccurate "300" was.  He castigated many films that tried to denote siege warfare in various silly forms, explaining that you simply need to dig ditches, lots of them.  Rather than molten lead or boiling oil, you should chuck rocks; they're free and effective and don't have any moving parts.

     Thus we come to another epic instalment of "Contra Mortui Viventes!".  Art!  O stop whining and put some Sudofed on them.

     As I hope I've made clear, your average legion wouldn't have the time, resources or manpower to construct defences like this, unless they had weeks of warning about an encroaching zombie horde.  What's much more likely is that only one or two of the above would be constructed.  You can see the final obstacle, a ditch, right in front of the earthen berm that has been thrown up from excavations.  Zeds having poor balance, those that step over the edge will plunge head-first to the bottom, to be crushed by those that follow after.  In order to over-top that wall and the palisade there would need to be a positive hill of dead zeds to allow their surviving compatriots to make it.  Whilst all along the legionaries in both upper levels of that tower would be bombarding them with rocks.  In the field there would probably be more than one ditch, too, making things even harder for the zeds.
     Which is not to say they wouldn't eventually prevail, only that it would take a long time and acres of dead zeds, whilst the legion could easily fall back.

     Ah, normality prevails, the sinister grey clouds are rolling back in again.

Finally -

Conrad cannot go into too much detail here, except to say he is enjoying a Penguin Crime Classic by Edmund Crispin, which has a couple of sly allusions to the fact that it's a novel, once referring to the author by name and on another occasion remarking that it's going to be published by Gollancz.  Subtle enough that an editor might well miss them.  Props to Crispin!

The imp himself

*  See what I did there?

**  Heh heh.