"Back?" I Hear You Quibble
- which you do far too often. Don't forget - Remote Nuclear Detonator!
"But we've never been to the capital of Azerbaijan," I hear you quiveringly qualify.
<deep sigh> not in person. Don't forget that there was a big ballfoot event there a few years ago - no idea what it was called and can't be bothered to check - with British ballfoot fans having to manage all sorts of exotic travel methods to get there. Not many flights from Manchester Airport to Baku, one expects. Art!
The fair city of Baku
In fact Baku has hosted many ballfoot events over the years, because it wins the bids for these happenings, and it wins these tenders because it is RICH. It cast off the Sinister yoke in 1991 and hasn't looked back, and you can see what a brake on progress the Sinisters were when you contrast Baku in 1991 and how it looks today. Art!
Baku in 1990*
Baku, you see, sits on an ocean of oil. It has been the <ahem> Texas of the Caucasus for well over a century, hence the wealth now that the money stays there and doesn't go walkies to Moscow. Art!
Tsar Putin probably casts covetous eyes at it on a regular basis, but has yet to come up with a convincing lie about how he needs to liberate the local suppliers of pomegranate jam from servile bondage, or some such.
ANYWAY that veers close to Politics. I shan't delete it, since it's always fun to tweak Dimya's tail and watch him cry. Poor chap. He only wants the whole world to love him, and it's never going to happen.
ANYWAY AGAIN all the above is merely a preamble (more like a pretrot) to another illustration I have taken from "The War Illustrated" which, if Art will put down his drink of North Sea Crude -
This fortnightly publication always had articles about the Eastern Front, even to the extent of front-page cover illustrations, so yah booh sucks to the Sinister pikers who railed about their never getting acknowledged.
Here an aside. The RAF regularly sent an unarmed Mosquito across Europe to Moscow to deliver diplomatic mails during the Second Unpleasantness. Unarmed because that meant less weight; less weight meant it could fly higher and faster, and the Luftwaffe had nothing with the speed to match it. The pilots were feted in Moscow society, and were invited to attend an opera, where the high and mighty of Sinister society oooh'd and ahhh'd in awe at the brave Brylcreem Boys. So they could manage it if they tried. Art!
One such Mosquito
ANYWAY AGAIN, AGAIN You can see the towers of the oil pumps in the first picture, and to starboard a brawny local stirring the oil so it doesn't set, or some other complex technical reason. One suspects that getting slathered with crude oil is not very good for one's skin, and that if you mentioned the words 'Health and Safety' to the Sinister management, they would look completely blank. Then you have the tanks where the oil was stored, and yet more derricks (?).
The importance of Baku was not lost on the Teutons, who were always starved of oil and petroleum products and whom could only rely on the Romanian oilfields at Ploesti, which were always getting bombed. So their invasion force that headed to the Caucasus had a large technical section full of oil prospecting and drilling equipment.
Which is a story for another day.
Baku circa 1900
I think it's time for the Motley to test the efficacy of our Intelligent Hopping Anti-Train Mines. Motley - I've got you a train costume, off you go now**.
"Reclaiming History" By Vincent Bugliosi
You remember, that breezeblock-sized tome I bought recently? With 1,500 pages and a separate DVD with footnotes? I have just gotten to the point in the narrative where Kennedy has been fatally shot and the Presidential motorcade is accelerating away from Dealey Plaza. Allow me to show my progress, 90 pages in. Art!
 |
| A tad disheartening. |
Ol' Vin certainly lays on the details of that morning. I hope it doesn't come as a surprise to you that JFK died at the scene - it did happen nearly 60 years ago and Conrad assumes you've heard what happened already. Your Humble Scribe didn't realise that quite a few people actually saw Lee Harvey Oswald, with his rifle, in the sixth-floor window of the Texas Book Depository, with such clarity that one person observed how cross he looked.
The building in question
This first chapter alone is 320 pages long. I don't mind telling you, this is going to be a mighty long read!
Back To The BBC
And their themed collection of photographs with the theme of 'derelict'. Don't forget, these are images that you the public have submitted, not created by the Corporation. Art!
Courtesy Alysson Iceton
This looks South Canadian. They paint all their barns red, don't they? It is described as an 'abandoned barn' and you just KNOW that a demented inbred psychopathic killer is lurking inside with a specially-sharpened sickle. Either that or a ghastly mutated monster that creeps out in the dark to devour what it can capture with it's six-taloned claws ...
Or maybe it's just an abandoned barn.
Quick! Let's check and see that Donald Fagen, the Grumpy Old Man of rock, is still alive - Phew, he is! That was a close one. We need to keep an eye on him, he's no spring chicken.
Don, atypically smiling
Finally -
Just an update. You know I like to keep you informed. This week I am working in the office, and confidently expect to be the only person present on Monday, as folks like to work from home first day of the week. It means a lie-in, which I won't get as I need to be up and about two hours before my start time. It can take an hour to get from Babylon-Lite to Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell, then ten minutes to walk to the office, then another ten minutes to get set up and my breakfast sorted. Add to that a possible ten-minute wait at the bus station, and a five-minute one at the bus shelter outside the Pleasant and there's not a lot of margin for lateness. Art!
<facepalm> No, Art, wrong Dark Tower. Try again whilst I warm up the Tazer cannons.
Right!
There will now be a lot of sizzling noises and many high-pitched screams.
And on that very entertaining note, we shall say goodbye.
* This may not be entirely accurate.
** Don't worry, motleys have a high pain threshold. And they come cheap.
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