No, It's Not A Challenge Or Instruction
In fact, being quite the stinker, I'm not going to explain today's title until later on <tweaks moustache ends in eeeevil fashion> and you'll just have to put up with it.
For today's Intro we are going to return to the - ah - 'imagineer' Frank Tinsley, he of the Baby Battle Buggy fame (or infamy). It seems that with Frank, the wish was father both to the thought and the artwork and he considered that if if could be drawn, it could be built. Art!
Maurits Cornelius says ye nay
Sadly, this is not the case. Half of M.C. Escher's stuff is proof of such.
ANYWAY let us see if we can screensnip the relevant pictures that Ol' Frank came up with for hydrographic transport. Actually not so much 'transport' as 'flinging at the heavens hopefully'. Art!
Hope Springs
Here's the answer to a question nobody asked, about how to irrigate the "parched deserts of Southern California" and to be fair Frank is only articulating the suggestion of an engineer. His plan was to build 400 power plants one mile apart, which would - er - shoot giant geysers of water across the mile-wide gaps. As you can see from Frank's illustration, the geysers would be aimed high over hilly terrain, but would be flat-trajectory over the level plains. Art!
SoCal desert terrain
You may have already spotted the design flaw here: a column of water shot from a high-pressure pump will inevitably and unavoidably spread out and disperse over distance and the greater the distance, the greater the dispersal. By the time this water reached the next geyser for collection and onward transportation, it would be nothing more than a fine mist.
That's not all. Each of those 400 pumping stations would cost £200, 000 and those are 1952 pounds, for a total of £80,000,000.
A station. For pumping.
It would, of course - obviously! - be far cheaper and simpler to just use pipelines to transport the H2O across the landscape. Readily available technology already in widespread use, no need for mist-spraying giant geysers. Art!
Motley, I've got my slippers but I cannot find my
Piratical Propensities
What do the following have in common? BEEN BEAN BARN CRANE RUNE NEAR BRAN BREN CANE BANE CAREEN NACRE CANCER.
I shan't keep you in suspense; they all contain the letter "N" and are derived from the word BUCCANEER which was the 9-letter word I couldn't get, in a word puzzle.
Of course, we can't leave it lying there, can we? The word has French roots, going back to the sixteenth and seventeenth century, when freebooting folks on the island of Hispaniola would smoke meat in order to preserve it, which they would sell to the pirates cruising those waters. To smoke meat in French was to "Boucaner" and over time the word was applied to the pirates themselves. Art!
A rough, tough buccaneer, rather spoiling the image by wearing a skirt.
It's The Nexus Of The Crisis -
And the origin of Storms, which is a lyric by Blue Oyster Cult that we can use to introduce another thrilling description of last weekend's Crisis Point. Art!
The British redcoats arrive at St Charles and surprise the French, who managed to get onto the roof of that building behind them with remarkable speed. The whole affair was poorly handled and only provided further evidence that young Arthur should never have been allowed to go off and be 'advised' by conniving French players; that boy is far too fond of diplomacy when we needed BLOOD AND BAYONETS! I can see him at the consulate in Saint Petersburg after
The Woebetideus have landed on Edward Henry Island, and are only being kept away from the Arab's delapidated castle by dint of cannon shot. The W's may not have many modern weapons, but O my! there are a lot of them. Art!
The French show up to shell advancing Woebetideus, just because they can. Proof, were it needed, that one cannot trust the French. Art!
Edward Henry Island
A desperate landing by the Woebetideus next to the fort goes badly wrong. Good idea, bad execution (excuse the pun). Meanwhile, over on the island of Petit Woebetide ...
British regulars and privateers in numbers are making life miserable for the Spanish allies of the French. By the time I left they were being pushed back almost into the flames of the campfire, and were just shy of breaking and routing. In which case the British could investigate that astonishingly stout and sturdy 'storehouse' that couldn't possibly contain gunpowder, grog and jewels - or could it? This success was entirely due to the bloodthirstiness of Tom, none of that namby-pamby negotiating here!
At which point I had to leave, as I needed to get to a garage to check my tyre pressures. Which were perfectly fine thank you. Still, it wouldn't be Crisis Point if I didn't have a bit of car trouble, would it?
Conrad And His Rampaging Rancour
Okay, as you may have guessed, today's title is composed of dodgy Codeword solutions that, AGAIN, surely stretch the limits of permissibility! and I am ending that line with an exclamation mark, NOT a question mark, because it's indisputably true.
"ABHOR": That is, to not like very much. Or, to dislike a very great deal. And when was the last time you used this work in conversation? Never. It's use is reserved for The Telegraph correspondents talking of their feelings about instant tea, which is an abomination beyond belief.
Abhorrent in every regard. BEGONE, ABOMINATION!
"YASHMAK": You what? A Turkish raincoat? Mongolian yak stew? Yiddish for 'A clip round the ear"? Hang on, let me Collins Concise it rather than guessing -
"The face veil worn by Muslim women when in public" I see - that would prevent them from eating yak stew, wouldn't it?
Their loss!
"MYSTIQUE": To have cachet. If one looks up "cachet" it says "See 'mystique'". Not to be confused with Mustique - Art!
Mind you, it's possible to argue that there is a certain mystique about Mustique, if we're being oblique.
Finally -
Don't worry, I haven't forgotten Nick and Warren, we will be coming back to them, O yes indeed! We will also definitely be following up more Frank Tinsley artwork because I've checked up and not only is there loads of same, it's all pretty bonkers stuff. And now, since we have hit the Compositional Ton, it's time for goodbye.
Goodbye!
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