Snake-Ize

Ha!  How Hilarious Is That!

<huffs at feeble response> Well I thought it was amusing, which is what matters.  Yes yes yes, it means to 'snake-ify' something and render it more snake-y, and it's also a cunning pun on the South Canadian term 'Snake eyes', which is to do with dice and gambling I believe*.  Art!

     Unlike many folks out there, Your Humble Scribe has no problem with snakes and has, indeed, handled one at the Portland Museum (of Science and Industry, possibly).  They are dry, smooth and warm, rather than the chilly, slimy horrors of old wives tales.  They are also vanishingly rare in This Sceptred Isle, because, as I mentioned yesteryon, we like our civilisation to be cultured, not coarse and threatening.  Conrad has never seen one in the wild in all his sixty years.

     Why are we being all snake today?  Why not!  Before going any further, let us bring out one of the most baddest of asses ever to walk  the earth.  Art!

SNAKE PLISSKEN!

     Your Humble Scribe, you see, had been contemplating that phrase "Snake in the grass" - thank you Steve and Oscar - and wondered where it came from.  Cue a quick referral to my copy of Brewer's, which defines it as 'a hidden or hypocritical enemy, a disguised danger.  It comes from Virgil, the Roman poet not the Tracey family pilot, and the Latin <hack spit> phrase 'Latet anguis in herba'.  Which  - you may be ahead of me here - means 'A snake is in the grass'.  Art!

Virgil, wearing the world's most ineffectual hat

     Because you are not widely-spread like Conrad, I bet you've been thinking that 'Snake in the grass' is an oxymoron, because where else would you find them?  Hang onto your hat - hopefully a proper one, unlike the holey-headed Roman poet's - because - Art!

Death from above!

     Behold the Flying Snake, and no, Conrad is entirely unaware of how many Hom. Sap. are killed each year by flying snakes that drop onto them and strangle strangle strangle, or bite with their incredibly toxic neuro-venom.

     Ah.  I just checked.  They're too fragile to strangle and their venom is pretty weak sauce.  Ah!  Ah BUT!  How many people have died from a HEART ATTACK when a snake suddenly entwines itself about them with zero warning!  Hmmm? <snaps fingers at boring reality>.

     Then you have water snakes.  This phrase may put the billy crins up people who fear snakes for no good reason, so let's just point and laugh at them for a moment.  

    Okay, schadenfreude over.  Art?

     These marine marauders are found in South Canada and British America, and Asia.  Doubtless there are none left in Norkland, they'll have eaten them all.  They are not venemous, but the "Encyclopedia Brittanica" describes them as bad tempered and they will bite freely.

     Then, finally, we have the nightmare Burrowing Snakes, which will hide up beneath the desert sands until an unsuspecting Hom. Sap. walks by, at which point they will emerge at terrific speed and bear down upon their hapless victim, devouring them whole.  Art!

     No - hang on a minute - 

     Quick, Motley, change the subject!

Conrad Is, As Per Default, ANGRY

O SO ANGRY!  About what, you ask?  Ah.  Yes.  Give me a minute.  O I know!  Art!

     A First Bus van drew up this morning to put "Not In Use" signs on those two bus-stops, and all during this morning and afternoon the noise of industrial plant and power-drills got nearer and louder.

     The worst part are the temporary traffic lights, which permit drivers with bad taste in music to share it with the rest of us.  And the pikers are bound to continue with this farrago tomorrow as well, meaning Conrad has to keep the windows shut or shout loudly on incoming phone calls.

Back To Tunisia

More vicarious photography from "The War Illustrated" which, believe me, will have been scrutinised by the censor.  Also, don't forget that to be a photographer marching with the Eighth or First Army, you had to have official accreditation.  No freelancing allowed.  Art!

     Here you have a very obviously staged photograph of Perfidious Albion's infantry 'having stormed an enemy pillbox'. Not just then they haven't.  If you look closely you can see a tropical pith helmet just above the right shoulder of the soldier intruding from the photo below.  The Axis used these, the British did not, as it made you look a proper charlie. Also note the length of the British 'Sword' bayonet on those rifles being wielded, the sort of martial accoutrement that made enemy knees wobble rather.

Platteville Astronomical Observatory

Just for a change, here's a site in Colorado rather than New Mexico or California.  The PAO was constructed to carry out research into the ionosphere, being a 'heater', meaning it goosed the ionosphere by electromagnetic heating.  Art!

     It was a predecessor and pioneer for HAARP, another, vastly larger ionosphere heater and the source of a million conspiracy theories.  The reason the swivel-eyed loonwaffles don't try to storm Platteville armed with automatic weapons (yes this happened at HAARP) is because Platteville shut down the heater program in 1984.  It now carries out research into wind and weather patterns.

Finally -

Conrad is once  again going to pontificate on what's going on in Ukraine again, although after seeing one of the most heart-breaking images imaginable - a small boy of two or three years old being evacuated utterly alone, all his possessions in a carrier bag and crying his eyes out - Art!

CAUTION!  Can cause heartache**.

If this does not move you then you are a piece of granite

     I am looking for some light relief.

     Fortunately, we have a cute dog.  Art!

     This is Patron, a bomb-sniffing Jack Russell, who was awarded a medal by Mister Zelensky.  Note the world's press assembled to hear how he has successfully hunted down 200 assorted munitions, a deft touch from Mister Zed in the ongoing information-warfare contest, and the Ruffians can't come back with a mine-dog of their own; they haven't enough food to feed themselves.  In fact if they ever did have a Vanya The Mine-Dog they probably cooked and ate it as it was that or starve.  Perhaps Tsar Poutine could award it a posthumous medal 'For making the ultimate sacrifice'.

     And on that undeniably acid note, we are done.

*  Conrad is too noble and upright to ever gamble

**  For all the Oooh and Aaaah at tanks and explosions and missiles, this is one of the worst humanitarian disasters to hit Europe in living memory.