Sharks, Pigs And Swans

All Of Them Delicious! 

I know what you're thinking, "Is he going to be harking on about Pink Floyd again - "Animals" perhaps?"  Well no, but since I got a phenomenal number of hits when I included Dave Gilmour in the title, I think we can pander a bit again and include another PF pictorial reference.  Art!

Definitely one of their best albums

     Okay, no, this Intro is nothing to do with Prog Rock's finest exponents, but is instead to do with "Reclaiming History", that breeze-block sized tome by Vincent Bugliosi about the assassination of JFK.  I have now reached Page 1336 and Vinnie has just been destroying conspiracy theories about anti-Castro activists  being responsible for his assassination.  Art!

Told you.  A breeze-block of a book

     Vinnie mentions that the only conspiracy theory that might hold water is that anti-Castro activists were responsible for the killing, which he then thoroughly debunks.  You see, when the Cuban exiles of Brigade 2506 were returned from Cuban captivity to South Canada, they were given an heroic reception involving JFK, and his remarks implied that the anti-Castro exiles would get a second bite at the cherry.  So they ended up on good terms with him.

     ANYWAY as you know Conrad is liable to investigate anything tangential to the issue at hand, so I did a bit of digging about -

     The Bay Of Pigs.  This was a doomed attempt by anti-Castro exiles, recruited by the CIA, to storm ashore in Cuba at the Bay Of Pigs in April 1961, establish a free territory, import a government, get it recognised by South Canada and await the uprising of the Cuban population against Fidel.  Art!

Cuban defenders

     The repeated assertion of the anti-Castro establishment is that the invasion failed because Kennedy forbade air-strikes against Castro's airfield and aircraft.  This is asserted time after time.

      Hmmmm.  Nope.  The real problem is that Brigade 2506 numbered under 1,500 men.  They were up against a Cuban army that outnumbered them 15 to 1, and a Cuban militia that outnumbered them 150 to 1.  Not all of these could or would have been mobilised quickly enough or be near enough to deal with the invaders, yet sufficient were to doom the invasion immediately.  Even if the Cuban air force had been completely destroyed, their armed forces on the ground were sufficient to carry the day.  The expected uprising?  Never happened.  Folks in that part of Cuba were Castro joy-junkies, which the CIA seems to have neglected.  One wonders what evidence or proof they had that an invasion, no matter how small, would trigger a popular uprising and overthrown the government?  Gosh, that almost sounds like the situation Bloaty Gas Tout expe

     ANYWAY Art!

     That's the Bay itself, and those reefs are known to locals as 'Shark's teeth', which considerably hindered the amphibious side of the operation.  It had been ordered from above, very late in the day, that the invasion site needed to be moved, and this particularly inappropriate spot was chosen.  

     So, there you go, that accounts for the pigs and the sharks.  You'll just have to wait for the swans.  We may come back to this, it has a bit of contemporary resonance.

      Motley!  I feel like an evening meal consisting of a whole roast pig served inside a whole roast shark - see to it!

Motley is on the case

I Promised You A Swan

You're probably expecting a box of matches or an electrical appliance, aren't you?  Not at all!  No, Conrad is going to pull up another of the BBC images from their "On The Water" photography collection.  Art!

Courtesy Hayley King

     This is a swan on Cherry Hinton Lake in Cambridge, according to the photographer.  Swans may indeed be delicious, but I wouldn't know as it's illegal to kill them.  Something about them being the problem of HM The Queen?  Do not test this, as being beheaded in the Tower Of London can offend.

"Eglantine"

One reason this blog will never run out of content is because Steve and Oscar, my memory and subconscious respectively, are always throwing up words or phrases either at random or very loose association with reality.

     Thus this word.  What could it be?  A variety of aubergine, that the South Canadians call 'eggplant'?  A variety of paint lacking the disgustingly toxic tetraethyl lead yet just as effective in deterring barnacles?  A concept in medieval chivalry that, if you killed the opposing knight, his good, chattels and hot sexy wife were your property to do with as you wish?

     None of the above.  Art!

     It's a flower, also known as "Sweet Briar" which might mean you can eat it, which is about as much as Conrad cares, which is where we end this item.  And no, I don't know why it popped up in my head.

Back To "The Sea Of Sand"

Nobody has yet complained about this ongoing series of extracts, from a story I wrote a loooooooong time ago.  Back in the days when BOOJUM! did not consume every waking hour.  You see?  You see how hard I work at this farrago?

‘It’s an international best-seller, or it will be,’ grumbled the Doctor, doing a little teasing of his own.  Seeing Sarah’s eyebrows shoot up he hastily backtracked.  ‘But you never heard me say that!’

Flattered by the anachronistic news, Sarah jumped down from her perch on the Louis XV chair and stood, hands on hips.

‘Okay, now I have to ask – whatever is the matter?’

In answer, the Doctor pointed to the time rotor, which had been rising and falling in characteristically wheezy fashion all this time.

‘That, Sarah Jane Smith, that is the matter.’

Sarah favoured the time rotor with a long look.

‘You’re the expert, Doctor, not me, but it seems to be working perfectly.’

‘Pah!  Perfectly!’ snorted the Doctor.  ‘If it were working perfectly then we’d have landed a good half hour ago,’ and he threw his scarf over his shoulder, fished in one of his capacious pockets and produced a small, wrinkled paper bag.

With a touch of worry, Sarah checked her watch.  Time, of course, was relative, most especially so in the TARDIS.  She had therefore made certain to time her writing – which had begun over an hour ago according to her watch.  Yet the Doctor had told her the short hop to Mars in the twenty third century would take twenty minutes, at most.

Sarah had become accustomed to the TARDIS and it’s occasional erratic behaviour, which she put down to several things:  the machine’s quasi-sentient state, the Doctor’s incessant tinkering with it and lastly his reluctance to carry out any repairs until forced to.  Or at least for this incarnation of the Doctor – the Third Doctor had taken the TARDIS to bits in order to try and regain his knowledge of how it functioned.

Ha!  Yes, you see the Third Doctor had been stranded on Earth by the Time Lords as a punishment for his incessant meddling in affairs that were not his responsibility.  Not only that, they'd gapped-out his memory of chronometric technology, so he couldn't simply vanish into the ether.

"Lasing Rods"

I mentioned these yesteryon, and said mention baffled Darling Daughter, who is a STEM worker and might be expected to know whereof I wiffle.  Okay, nothing to do with - Art!

MOMENT'S SILENCE FOR A COMIC GENIUS PLEASE

     No, you see a lasing rod is a rod that directs a laser impulse down it, usually sacrificing itself in the process.  They came into vogue during the Eighties, when they were suggested as a method of combatting Sinister ICBMs.  You'd have a Laser Battle Satellite, designed around a nuclear warhead, bristling with lasing rods, and when the Sinisters launched hundreds of ICBMs, these LBSs would detonate their core, generating a gamma-ray laser pulse down the rods, even as the LBS vapourised.  One satellite could therefore take out dozens of ICBMs.  Art!

Finally - 

We are well over the Adjusted Compositional Ton, so I shall leave you with a hearty handshake and a happy hello.  Chin chin!