I'm Going To Jump In Here
Without doing any background checks or research, because we only have 24 hours to save the world. Or was that destroy it? One of the two.
Actually that brings about an aside. Conrad - mind like a skip, remember - recalls a board game called "Chainsaw Warrior" which had cover art by one of the 2000 AD crew, and a great tag line - "60 minutes to save New York". Art!
Conrad has no idea what the game's about, nor how to play it, which isn't the point, which was - er - Art!
Hmmm apparently it's a solo game, you versus the clock. Conrad is also unconvinced that a chainsaw makes a great close-quarters combat weapon, partly because it's liable to get jammed with bone and gristle and h
ANYWAY I was watching "War Of The Worlds", the Anglo-French television series, which they characterised as an updating of the original H. G. Wells novel. The alien invaders hail from a star called Ross 128, which might even be real - hang on - I say! It is. It's only 11 light years distant, and possesses a small rocky exoplanet close to Earth in size, orbiting a red dwarf star. Well well Wells. Art!
Ross 128b: a home from home
The reason for this ought to be obvious, though I cannot resist spelling it out for you pikers: Mars has no native inhabitants. There are no canals, there are no Martians, there is hardly any water and - you get the idea. Mars is a wasteland. This is not how the Red Planet has been seen since men started squinting through telescopes and before we sent probes there.
This brings up another aside. I believe it was Harry Harrison and Brian Aldiss who edited the volume entitled "Farewell, Fantastic Venus", and if Art will put down his bowl of coal -
They had a similar idea, of compiling stories created when people fondly imagined that the total cloud cover over Venus constituted water vapour. We know better now; were you to land on the surface, unprotected, you would be simultaneously crushed, roasted and melted, not gently doused in gossamer strands of rainwater.
A similar delusion existed about Mars. Art!
ERB seems to have had a cottage industry going on with his publications about Mars. Fortunately for his income, he popped his clogs long before we found out the truth. Television got in on the act, too, WHEN THEY SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER. Art!
It ran for THREE YEARS!
What is wrong with some people?
Conrad doesn't care that it was merely a sit-com, IT'S WRONG and yes I can be completely humourless when I care to be, which is right now. I have to say that Hollywood seems to have taken science to heart, because there are exactly nil canals in "The Martian", nor are there exotic green-skinned princesses daringly underclad and curious about 'This human emotion called 'love'". Art!
Clearly pining for a princess
There we go. I think I've been quite creative in managing 500 words from a core concept of 5*.
Back In Tunisia
Yes, more of "The War Illustrated" because if I can be bothered to take the pictures, you lot are going to experience them in excruciating detail. Art!
From the top down we see a Bren Carrier of Perfidious Albion entering Ben Gardane, one of the Tunisian towns liberated from the Axis, and beneath that to starboard we see a British officer conversing - probably in very bad schoolboy French - with two urbane French gendarmes, Tunisia being a French colony at the time, until the Axis very distastefully occupied it. You can bet that Rommel was feeling rather dispirited by now; a couple of months previously he'd almost been at the gates of Alexandria, and now here he is on the other side of the continent, two countries away. The "Confucius him say" is apparently a joke of the time. I dunno. Perhaps you had to be there?
The photo at bottom is of a Teuton half-track, an Sdkfz 9, more technically a three-quarter track except that's a bit clumsy on the tongue, and here you see Teuton over-engineering at it's finest. Because it was so heavy at 18 tons, they've used double rows of interleaved wheels to spread the weight, which gives a surprisingly smooth ride yet which makes repair and maintenance a pain in the bottom. Art!
The TWI model has been captured intact, possibly being abandoned due to lack of fuel, and it's new owners - a right bunch of pirates - are going to enjoy working it to the very limit. It's enemy kit, they're not going to get into trouble for it. The TWI caption calls it a 'strange-looking vehicle' because the British didn't go in for half-tracks and had none of their own.
I did have another photo but I've yarked on at length so we shall instead move swiftly along.
Bringing On The Torment
Hooray, another extract from "Tormentor"! At least that's what I fondly imagine you saying.
Unable
to speak, the spirit shook her head. She
seemed to draw strength from leaning against Louis, pressed against him. He steadied her with an arm around her
shoulder, trying to reassure her with a hug.
Slowly, she grew more aware, less
tense and even the wrinkles in her face filled in.
‘Thankyou,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, that was dreadful.’
‘It looked it. What happened? What exactly
was that thing?’
One of Morgan’s more senior
serfs, not the main monster himself.
‘It hid inside the Professor,’
she explained. ‘That’s how it caught
me. I – I got too close and then it
just burst out of him. And all the time it had me trapped it was
tasting me, feeding off me.’
Once more she collapsed in a fit
of shivers, slowly relaxing against him.
She needs energy. Warmth? wondered Louis.
‘Here, get up and sit against the
headboard. That’s it,’ and he piled the
duvet up around her. ‘Better?’
Yvonne smiled wanly.
‘Aren’t I supposed to be looking
after you?’
Louis stayed where he was, on top
of the duvet.
‘Notice me staying above the
covers. No incubus stuff,’ he
joked. Internally he felt a slow,
seething anger. He’d sworn to get Morgan
before. Now, making spirit associates
targets meant he was even more determined to get back at King **** of the
Monsters. The Professor’s spirit had
gone, Moved On by force.
How sweet of him! And as for you lot WASH OUT YOUR FILTHY MINDS! There'll be no hanky-panky on my watch.
A Bit Of Blue
Yes, a little light relief from pain and misery and torment, because whilst those things are fascinating to read and write, you have to temper malice with mint**. Art!
Courtesy Karim Shokair
This was taken on the Egyptian coastline, of course - obviously! - because if you did this off the coast of This Sceptred Isle, the Coast Guard or RNLI would be hauling your hypothermic haunches out of the briny deeps.
Finally -
Things haven't exactly quietened down in Ukraine, though there is a bit of a lull. This is because Dimya's idiot legions have to move back north, across the border into Belarus and Ruffia itself, get loaded up on trains and then railroaded east and south to be able to attack the Donbas region. Given that the Ukes have their own intelligence networks and are doubtless being supported by every NATO country's intelligence service, most especially South Canada, they can predict to the hour when the attack will come.
Can you spell Howling Irony? I can and just did. Remember what Dimya's crack team of military advisers - Art!
- claimed was a pretext for the w- 'Special' Military Operation? They didn't want Ukraine to join NATO, because that would make it attack-proof. However - Art!
Sweden and Finland are going to be joining the alliance by June. Of course the Kremlin's spokespeople frothed with rage at this, claiming it was 'destabilising' HOWLING IRONY ALERT. Well, what are you going to do about it, Dimya? Stage an embarrassingly inept inv - 'Special Military Operation? But don't worry, Ruffians - everything is going according to plan. Let's hear it for the SMO Planner!
With a Javelin.
* Loquacious, that's me
** I like mint. That's enough justification.
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