The Wails Of Whales In Wales

Bear With Me Here, I'm Making This Up As I Go Along

There I was, wondering what on earth I could use to hang a whole Intro on, when I recalled that bit from yesteryon about the Greek <hack spit> for 'Whale' - 'Oryx' - and then postulated how would the ancient Greeks know what a whale looks like?  Because surely there are none in the Mediterranean.  Art!

     Well Duh.  I feel such a fool.  If only I had been trained and qualified in oceanography, this would never have happened.  We can assume that the waters around ancient Greece would have seen at least a few of these marine behemoths, hence the reason they have a word for it.  Logical enough, as Socrates would have affirmed.

     Then, of course, my grasshopper mind continued, because Steve and Oscar never sleep, and I saw a theme develop.  Art!

"The screams"

     "The screams" are actually whale-song, and Pink Floyd were probably the first band to use same on a recording.  Conrad thinks it was a vocoder-version rather than a direct recording of the real thing, but still - it takes a bit of imagination to stick this on a record as of 1971.  Frankly, that part of "Echoes" is an horrid atonal distraction and if the band had edited it out nobody would have missed it.

     There was another record I had of a band that used whale-song in their opening track on their debut LP (as we called them back then in the Eighties).  Hothouse Flowers?  Art!

     Nope, cover does not look familiar.  We may come back to this, you know I love getting my teeth into a mystery.

     Probably the most famous use of whales in cinema is from an offshoot of an obscure Sixties television franchise, "The Girl From U.N.C.L.E" where Stefanie Powers portrayed   

               Captain Kirk and his crew arrive back in Eighties California, because an alien space probe is going to destroy all life on Earth if it doesn't hear a bit of Dog Buns! whale-song.  What, nobody in the future is a Pink Floyd fan?  They then have to locate and transport a couple of humpback whales to the future.  Art!

"Not gunna lie, one-star rating for this accommodation."

    Of course, the most famous whale of all is Moby Dick, from the tediously tiresome novel by Herman Melville.  Conrad tried reading it an age ago and found it tiresomely tedious, with annotations every other page explaining how clever Ol' Hermy was, and how grateful you ought to be at reading his deathless prose arga warga arga warga.  Sorry, no.  Art!

WASH OUT YOUR FILTHY MINDS!

     There is also a sci-fi novel called "The Godwhale" by T.J. Bass which I read a description of in the late Seventies (because there were often short blurbs about other novels in the back of the one you were reading) but never got around to reading until a decade ago.  Art!

My edition

     The novel is far too complex to summarise here, being written by a real-life doctor (with some odd views about health) and it shows.  It is complex and well-established and features the "Rorqual Maru", a cyborg whale adapted to harvest ocean plankton as a base foodstuff.  Dog Buns, I've got myself curious again and - hello Abebooks here we come.

     O yes, about that title - Art!

     These orcas seem to like visiting Welsh coastal waters.  Chin chin!

No Impulse Control

Conrad has gotten into trouble at work over his flapping tongue, which moves into third gear before his brain engages clutch.  Like the time I met Matt Hartless, he of "Matt Hartless And The Maverick Seven" and blurted out 'I thought you were taller' <retrospective facepalm>.

     So it is with books.  Yesterday I purchased "Inside Enemy" and - you may be ahead of me here - today I finished it.  320 pages.  Art!

Told you the cover was bland

     It brought up the concept that the Sinisters, and now the Ruffians, like to get their treacherous fellow-travellers back home so they can live out their lives within the Sinister/Ruffian borders.  Well yes.  Spend twenty-five years in prison or go live in Moscow?  There's not a lot in it.

Meanwhile, Back In Tunisia

Nearly eighty years ago the First and Eighth Armies were advancing relentlessly upon the ever-shrinking Axis bridgehead in North Africa, which was being starved of supplies thanks to the tightening air and sea blockade.  Art!

     This is one of the montages that "The War Illustrated" liked to do once per edition, with an explanation at the bottom.  BOOJUM! would like to go through these individual pictures one at a time, if that's okay with you.  It is?  Splendid!  Art?

     This first photo is a couple of chaps practicing with a rifle-grenade.  If you are aware, a hand-grenade is weighty object, and you can't throw them that far.  Using a rifle to propel them means you can drop them a couple of hundred yards away, to the discomfiture of the Axis it arrives amongst, and it doesn't leave a warning smoke trail or enormously loud BANG on being fired.  To be honest, their role had been largely supplanted by mortars at this stage in the w - sorry, 'Special' Military Operation - but any means of making maleficent  mattered.

Finally -

Another revelatory Ruffian recapitulation, this time round from a Youtube channel dubbed "Operator Starsky", whom happens to be a Uke soldier with excellent idiomatic English, and whose mates had 'acquired'a Ruffian Orlan drone.  They were going to take it apart and see what secrets it revealed.  Art!

When in Ruffian hands

     They weren't very impressed initially with a drone that is supposed to cost £75,000.  They wondered what the high-tec interior hid - Art!

     Nope.  Wherever 'Kemerovo' is it's not in Ruffia, because when they dismantle the drone they find a camera.  A Japanese camera.  Art!

     Canon, for those with weak eyesight.  Starsky's cameraman declares it to be an 800D Canon, which costs, at most, £450.  When asked he calculated that a few Ukrainian conscripts could build an Orlan-replica for £2000, most of which - Art!

     Ouch.  So, the remaining $97,000 has been creamed off by the Ruffian Corruption Mafia, like everything else in Ruffia with a budget.  That figures.

     Starsky, his cameraman and the truculent other bloke went through the whole drone and couldn't find ANYTHING Ruffian in it's components.  It may be dirt cheap but they're not going to be building any more of them.