- To Derelinquere?
Go on, make a decision without Googling what it is first.
It is, of course - obviously! - derived from the Latin (that language with which we have a love-hate relationship, mostly hate <hack spit>) - "De" and "Relinquere", which means "To leave". And from it we derive "Derelict", that buzz-word of the previous month that the BBC asked for photographic submissions about. In fact we can re-print the first picture in the series, because - Art!
Dereliction.
(Courtesy of Chris Bowman)
You see, Conrad discovered a legal meaning for the word "Dereliction" in his Collins Concise: the accretion of dry land due to the gradual receding of the sea. So there may be a little bit of dereliction going on with that derelict.
ANYWAY let us move on to the next picture in this photo-essay. Art!
Courtesy of a somewhat skeptical Fran Powell
Hmmmm Conrad is skeptical, too. First of all this cannot be in the UK, because a gang of teenaged chavs would have stolen and smashed it within hours. Secondly, it seems far too conveniently placed. What, those weeds grew really really fast whilst the owner's back was turned? Doubtless it's an art 'installation' of some sort, there to advertise - O I don't know, self-lighting candles? ("Dangerous at parties!") or - or - Intelligent Hopping Anti-Tram Mines?
Whatever.
And that, Vulnavia, is the end of our Intro*.
Proof That Conrad Has A Sole
In fact two of them, on the bottom of each foot. Ha! Okay, okay, it was a bit thin. This morning Your Humble Scribe was sitting eating his toast - without the eagerly-awaiting Edna to hand - just as the sun began to let everyone know it was about to rise. Art!
Amazingly enough, no clouds. The day went on to be chilly yet sunny, which is just fine by Conrad, as your lovable alien interloper comes from an ice-world in the constellation of <REDACTED> where the ambient temperature is a balmy minus fifty degrees Centigrade**.
Frank's Tanks
I did intend to introduce this item yesteryon, then thought better of it as the very long Intro had mostly been about matters martial. So instead we have it here. "Frank" as you ought to know by now is the late, great Frank Tinsley, South Canadian artist and illustrator and occasional article-creator for the magazines of his era. Art!
Here Frank's text describes a six-legged Lunar rover, which would be used to explore the Moon, immediately making Conrad suspect that this article came out before July 1969. The date is in fact April 1962, so well done me. Frank has drawn a prototype vehicle being proposed to cross rough terrain whilst carrying cargo and passengers, as well as a driver. Conrad is unsure about the 'Combat' part of this since it looks rather unwieldy, slow and with an open cockpit. Nor am I quite sure what those strange emissions are that originate with the second pod in each train. Now, before you scoff - Art!
Spectrum Lunar Rover
This one jumps, rather than walks and can easily switch direction as it's a mechanical palindrome. Plus, if futurologist Gerry Anderson gave it the thumbs-up, it will exist in our lifetime***. O - also -Art!
Boston Dynamics' robot "dog", which is undeniably able to cross rough terrain whilst carrying cargo, yet which is also undeniably creepy in both form and function. I think you'd have a hard time persuading passengers to sit on it.
So. I think Frank was more accurate than he realised was possible.
The Great Cotton Poll Swindle
Conrad enjoys listening to Sergei Sputnikoff's "Ushanka Show" Youtube channel, which details aspects of Sergei's living for 7,000 days in the Sinister Union's beating spleen - you can't call Ukraine the heart, not really. What's also amusing are those readers who live in the West who loudly condemn him for being anti-Sinister, because they read about it in a book and living there for twenty years is no excuse .....
Sergei being slavic
ANYWAY he posted a fascinating account of what became known as "The Cotton Case" or "The Uzbek Case" and which illustrated the utter moral (and material!) bankruptcy of the Sinister Union. I ain't gonna link it, so you have to read my article.
Cotton. The principal cash crop of the Uzbekistan Socialist Republic. They produced 4 million tons of it per year back in the early Seventies. Leonid Brezhnev, the ailing and aging Supreme Nabob of the Sinister lands, prodded his best mate Sharof Rashidov into agreeing to grow 5.5 million tons. There was no way this was possible - yet the USR managed to post gigantic increases in cotton. Art!
Mister Smug, hmmm?
It was all a con, of course. There was no increase in cotton production, merely an eventually gigantic network of record fakery and corruption, with the USR leeching billions of roubles from Moscow. Yet Sharof was untouchable thanks to being Brezhnev's bezzy.
Until -
Brezhnev died. I know, I know, "how can you tell?" He was succeeded by the chilly Andropov, who rang Sharof to ask how much cotton was really being grown. Shaof then mysteriously died and the truth about this has never come out. There then began a six-year investigation that executed or imprisoned thousands of people. The whole swindle had robbed Moscow of their equivalent of £100,000,000 and they were predictably out for blood.
Sergei's hilarious account of life in South Canada
Sergei finished this jaw-dropping tale with a very severe caution about ever taking Sinister statistics seriously, and you can see why. Go look up his Youtube channel and buy his book. Do svidaniya!
Finally -
Just a caution that I am working today, from 09:00 until 17:00, and on phones, too - gasp! yes - a novelty this, since Saturdays were always sacrosanctly free from phones. No! I cannot simply put myself on "Busy" for seven hours fifteen minutes (the rest being lunchtime) and type up another blog post. That would be highly immoral, and also liable to lead to a dismissal for Gross Misconduct. Under the old system, where we used our own mobile phone to take calls, I think it was theoretically possible to put oneself on "Busy" from the minute you started up until finish time. No centrally-monitored app to allow managers to load up on the greasy eyeball, you see.
ANYWAY that's a long convoluted way of saying you only get one post today.
Alexander Graham Bell. You see what you did, you piker!
* What? I can be succinct. Occasionally.
** I had to adapt to fridges and freezers when I arrived.
*** Mine, anyway, as I have a life expectancy of 437 of your human years.
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