Inner Stew

Ha!  Sometimes I'm So Funny I Amuse Even Me

Now is not one of those times, just to be clear.  Okay, for those unfortunates who live beyond the blessed realm that is This Sceptred Isle, I should explain that being in un-auspicious circumstances here is referred to as 'Being in a stew', equally as much as 'Being in a bit of a pickle', although people lazily defer about exactly which part of the pickle it is.  I mean, there's not much to a pickle, is there?  Why not 

     ANYWAY as you should surely know by now, Conrad has for the past few months brewed up a big batch of stew on a Sunday so that he can effortlessly use it at lunchtime during the working week.  Usually this is my variation on Polish Hunter's Stew - Art!

He's a hunter, and it's in Polish, so ...

     A couple of weeks back I changed my routine MY BELOVED ROUTINE and made 'Burgoo', for no other reason than that it had popped up in my mind as a word, like 'Ortelsburg' did this morning*.  Today it was the turn of another Eastern European nation: Hungary.  Art!

The twin cities of Buda and Pest

     Yes I say, Hastings Ismay.  For I decided to venture upon a Goulash tonight, which also involved a bit of Conrad improvisation DREADED IMPROVISATION as we didn't possess a couple of pounds of diced lamb in The Mansion.  Art!

     Okay, once I eat some it will, indeed, be stew inside Your Humble Scribe, and hence today's title.

     Motley, it's been a long time since lunch, are you Hungary?  If so I'll be Romania.

Shall We Roll Out More 'TORMENTOR'?

Again, I have to confess I've no idea why I chose that title.  It was 6 years ago (I think) and you know what they say, the past is another country, except in this case it's abroad on a fourteen-hour flight with a stopover in Bahrain.  Conrad also feels as if he's trying to align with that recently-purchased trade paperback "BRZRKR" and should be writing "TRMNTR".

Keanu.  Genuinely nice guy.
(Apart from the indestructible killing machine bit)

     Let it begin!

    (Our protagonist, Louis McMahon, has just woken from a drunken stupor):

I ought, I ought, I ought, he told himself, shaving so rapidly that his chin sported half a dozen nicks when he threw half a basinful of water over his face.  I ought to get a grip on my life and live it, instead of hiding behind a bottle.

When he dashed downstairs there were still five minutes to go.  Jennifer took care never to arrive early, she and Angela apparently sharing a tacit agreement that there might be a single-male midden to tidy by six o’clock, and it would be unsporting to arrive early enough to witness the sad sight of a thirty year old running around cleaning like a teenager.  He’d known Jen since she was eight and  pretty much assumed he couldn’t worry her with an untidy room, but a man had to do his best.

Louis threw the curtains open, feeling like a mole in the September sun that came in and lit up the lounge like a spotlight.  With a sudden turn, he examined the room.

Not too bad.  He must have put all the empties in the kitchen.  Those newspapers made the place look messy.  And the coffee table needed wiping.

     Of course you are supposed to ask why he's plonkoed at that time of day, and whom Jennifer might be, and what she's doing arriving at a seedy male squat (or so it may seem).  Setting the scene!

"Reclaiming History" By Vince Bugliosi

Your Humble Scribe is now 140 pages, or less than 10%, into this breeze-block tome, and has come across a couple of interesting assertions from Ol' Vinnie.  For one, JFK was not a well man, even if he left younger and healthier staff and politicians trailing in his wake whilst he campaigned.  Thus he wore a medical corset on 22/11/1963 - Art?

Something like

     This meant when he was hit in the throat by Oswald's first shot he did not collapse forward, as anyone else would have done, because the corset physically restricted his movement.  Thus he was left sitting upright, a target for the next shot.

     Ol' Vinnie also notes that being a South Canadian President is a hazardous job, as one out of every three elected to that position have had an assassination attempt made upon them <add satirical joke about the Ice Cream Bandits or the Wizard Lizard Gizzards here>.  

     I just thought I'd share these thoughts with you.

This is to do with stealing ice cream.  Or lizard gizzards.  One of the two.

An Earth-shattering Kaboom

Up to a point.  As any watcher of 'Looney Tunes' will be able to tell you, Marvin The Martian is ineluctably bent on destroying Planet Earth, which earns him my wrath because I don't want to take over a despoiled wasteland.  After

     ANYWAY whilst I was trawling around the Imperial War Museum North, what did I espy but the following.  Art!

     This puppy, ladies and germs, is a WE177, a free-fall nuclear bomb as used - perhaps 'employed' is a better term - by the RAF from 1963 to 1998.  It had a yield of 400,000 tons of TNT, the equivalent of about 400 trainsworth of HE.  That above is the training version, because you didn't want anyone to make mistakes on the real thing, just in case, as destroying most of Lincolnshire would reflect badly on the RAF.  There was an illustrative picture alongside - Art!

     The sub-text here is "Bad - very very bad" lest you be unaware.  Nuclear weapons - wonderful to theorise about, very much less so in real life.

Finally -

Gosh, I have neglected to vent about the latest ignominies inflicted by the Codeword compilers. I suspect their employers are lying to these new workers, about how their previous hires suddenly ran off to Machu Picchu leaving behind only a radioactive residue over their desks and no 'Goodbye!' note.  Well, they may get a stay of rightful rancorous revenge as the Remote Nuclear Detonator is in for servicing this week - something about the Big Red Button being hit so hard so often.

     We shall see, we shall see.

*  We've covered this fascinating (and bloodily violent) Polish town before.