It'll Make A Kentuckian Out Of You
Unless, of course - obviously! - you are already a Kentuckian, in which case it'll only make you full, because it's filling stuff indeed. Art!
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| Today's lunch |
This is Kentucky Burgoo, which consists of 3 varieties of meat: lamb (because it was going cheap and there was no pork), casserole beef and chicken drumsticks. Plus stock, onion, potato, carrot, celery, sweet corn and butter beans, because I've no idea what a 'Lima Bean' is. National vegetable of Peru? The important bit is to cook it for over 3 hours, so it becomes a stew. Your Humble Scribe halved the quantities in the recipe and still has enough to feed eight people.
Incidentally, this Intro reminds me of that loathsome advert for Ragu, which Conrad hated with the thermonuclear intensity of Castle Bravo*. Art!
Stoking my rage even as I type
"Ragu Ragu Ragu," went the stupid chorus. "It'll make an Italian out of you."
IT WAS MADE IN THE NETHERLANDS. THE NETHERLANDS!
Conrad respects the forward-thinking Dutch, who are usually a decade or two ahead of everyone else when it comes to morals and ethics; but not this time.
ANYWAY because yes, I am greedy, but I can only eat a certain amount before exploding, Wonder Wifey suggested freezing one of the two very large plastic tubs filled with Burgoo, which I took her up on. It's the sort of sensible suggestion that would never occur to Conrad.
Plus I feel all Kentuckian. Apparently Burgoo is cooked for the Kentucky Derby (whatever that may be) in giant kettles - WAIT! let us not be idle or lazy and check out this event.
Aha! It is a horse race, at which I instantly lost interest. O go on. It's for three-year old throughbreads and occupies as long as two minutes. Art!
Loser becomes tomorrow's soup course
Yes yes yes. The Burgoo? Come on Art, get your skates on.
Much more interesting than Dobbin and Daisy
There you go. Food: a subject Conrad is always interested in.
The Volga, The Volga -
It's what stopped Holger. "Holger" being a Teuton name, right? For Lo! we are onto the next edition of "The War Illustrated" because you can only write so much about stew. Art!
Holger Czzukay. I rest my case.
Okay, gentle reader, the city we know and love as "Volgagrad" had a different name, before The Little Sod With The Moustache (Stalin if we're being formal) fell from power and the Sinisters stopped worshipping him: Stalingrad. Art!
There were a surprising number of civilians left in the murdered cityscape, possibly as many as 10,000 and only the lord aloft knows how they managed to survive what John Erikson has quoted as "slave warfare". In a struggle between two totalitarian dictatorships where neither would give way, this really was one of the most awful battles in human history**. Art!
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| Note Batumi and Baku at port and lower starboard |
This is the general situation on the ground, although you can bet it didn't come from the Sinisters, who regarded maps as more secret than radio beacons, and in fact seem to have regarded every single solitary map as being the paper equivalent of My Precious. Art!
O look a double-page spread. The caption really plays up how fierce the struggle is. Note Sinister soldier at lower port with a trench periscope and a Tokarev self-loading rifle, which, typically of the Sinisters, was a good idea let down by shoddy construction. Looks pretty cool, mind. Art!
That, ladies and gentlemen and those unsure, is a Breeches Buoy, used by the Senior Service to transfer people and small objects between ships. Using it means not having to slow down very much, nor having to mess about with launching a small boat and clambering up and down ship's hulls. I also wanted to put it up because -
The Inferno That Towered
You know what I mean. Okay, whilst the Tower is busy inferno-ing, Steve McQueen's character orders that a Breeches Buoy be constructed, leading from the Tower to a neighbouring skyscraper's roof. Art!
What Conrad liked about the establishing scene is that nobody bothers to explain what a Breeches Buoy is; they just get on with creating it, one firefighter taking especially risky moves to get the ropework set up. When I am further into the film's analysis I'll post screenshots. Until then -
The only way to fly
Delicious Schadenfreude***
Further confirmation, should you need it, that Conrad is indeed a terrible person. Schadenfreude, for those of you neither fluent in Teuton or maliciousness, is the deliberate enjoyment of other people's misfortune. And here we have a prime candidate. Art!
That's Solly looking dejected at port. I've blown this up to Extra Large so you can see the number of comments: 3767, which is up from 2534 when I snapped a photo yesterday. Conrad, not giving a stuff about the ballfoot game, does not have a dog in this fight but is pretty certain that at least 90% of those comments will not be remotely supportive, and some will find ingenious ways to get around censorship that prevents or removes profanity. I had better be careful about reading it - if each comment takes only a second to read then that's over an hour. O so tempting!
Finally -
Working from home today, as yesterday was the day I chose to show my hideous grinning maw in the office, whilst our new Very High Up In Recruitment lead was visiting. Very personable and approachable, not at all precious. She gets a thumbs-up from Conrad, which (hopefully!) she will never know about.
Of course the down side of working in the office is the perpetual battle with Worst Bus, so I trammed it up to King Street in Oldham, in time to see a bus I suspect was the 18:40 driving off 4 minutes early. You can see why I confidently assert Worst Bus timetables are the biggest work of fiction since "Gormenghast". can't you? Rather to my surprise the 18:53 arrived except it, too, was 4 minutes early. So the driver had a nice stroll in the fresh air at Oldham Bus Station; I did turn this to advantage and completed the MEN's Cryptic.
He must have spent too long inhaling diesel fumes outside because we then sped at slightly less than the speed of light to Rochdale.
Happy times!
Know your enemy
* You remember, the fifteen megaton explosion that should only have been five
** Notice how it is FRONT PAGE NEWS! you whiny Sinister pikers.
*** Calorie-free!
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