Math Versus Myth

Yes Yes Yes

We are going to be venturing forth into folk tales, and Your Humble Scribe's analytical take on same, because the world would be a poorer place were it not for wildly inappropriate and detailed analysis of folk tropes.  Because none of the above makes any kind of visual sense I think we need a placeholder.  Art!

HMCS Esquimault

      This, gentle reader, is one of the many vessels put into service during the Second Unpleasantness by the British Americans, in this case 'His Majesty's Canadian Ship -' because the British Americans were really 110% gung-ho determined to serve The King.  All volunteers, too.  

     ANYWAY we are back onto "The Red King And The Witch" and today's title, dealing with folk tales and myths.

And he departed further, and journeyed on eight years and arrived at a palace of copper. And a maiden came forth from that palace and took him and kissed him. She said, 'I have waited long for thee.'

She took the horse and put him in the stable, and the lad spent the night there. He arose in the morning and placed his saddle on the horse.

Then the maiden began to weep, and asked him, 'Whither away, Peterkin?'

'Thither, where there is neither death nor old age.'

Then the maiden said to him, 'Here is neither death nor old age.'

Then he asked her, 'How comes it that here is neither death nor old age?'

Why, when these mountains are levelled, and these forests, then death will come.'

This is no place for me,' said the lad to her. And he departed further.

     Hmmmm I think we can read between the lines here.  "And the lad spent the night there" well first of all he'd been travelling for eight years at this point, so he is most definitely not a 'lad', thank you very much.  Don't forget he'd already been travelling for eight years before this, so he's getting a bit long in the tooth.  

     Then we have another Contract As With Death Duly Notarised By All Parties, where Queenie only kicks the bucket when  ' - these mountains are levelled, and these forests -'

      EXCUSE ME!  

     This is Mount Everest, and how long would it take for it to be levelled into the Nepalese plain?  Using only horsepower as these folk-stories are hundreds of years before steam engines, let alone internal combustion ones.

     THIS IS ONLY THE START!  Because the second part of that phrase includes " - and these forests" which implies that the associated geological flora also have to be flattened.  Good luck in deploying the Triphibian Tactical Tree-crusher three hundred years before it appeared in real life.  Art!

The TTT with puny human for scale

 
     This is, of course - obviously! - proof positive that Peterkin is an collective bottom-hole of the worst sort, since he could have sat out infinity with this princess whilst levelling those mountains with a shrimp fork.  If you work it out at one shrimp fork per century, someone who drew up this infernal contract is going to regret it.  One shrimp fork per century PER TWIG PER CENTURY I think you can see where this is going, because at that rate natural erosion would add sufficient land to eliminate the shrimp forkful removed to date.  We shall leave out how far the forest would have spread in the meantime.

     DID THESE PEOPLE NOT GET THEIR CONTRACTS FORMALLY APPROVED BEFORE NOTARISATION?  Really, one has to ask.  I bet they were dealt with by the judicial numpties who advised Sisyphus and Prometheus.

This explains so much!

Let's Get The Next Lot Of Sandy Schaudenfreude Out Of The Way

Yes indeedy Ally Sheedy. "The Sea Of Sand" coming right up.

.  From his vantage point on the rim of the great sand bowl the complex sat in, he could see right to the other side, an uninterrupted vista of black, satiny, massive structures.  The nearest was a variety of simplified Acropolis, standing around eighty feet tall.  Beyond that lay a gigantic circular plinth, surmounted by two pylons that must have been a hundred feet in height, tapering to narrow points.  Other structures lay at varying distances from the plinth: a curved and completely enclosed structure with a slab of the black substance blocking off each end; a row of cubic structures, each the size of a house at one of the cardinal points; the stub of another pylon, thinner than the two on the plinth, and the rest of the pylon, lying shattered on the ground for two hundred feet; curiously humped domes at the far edge of the complex.

The material looked pristine, as if hewn from polished basalt only yesterday.

These structures are not human! How can they not realise! wondered the Doctor, before answering his own question; these humans had no concept of, or contact with, intelligent extra-terrestrial life (barring himself).

Down amongst the buildings, a trio of figures moved.  One caught sight of the new arrival and stopped, to point.

The Doctor jogged at an easy pace down the inner side of the sand basin, striding up to the three archaeologists standing bemused next to a canvas shelter.

‘Hello!  How do you do!  I’m the Doctor!  You must be Professor Templeman?’ he guessed, of a large, bearded man clad in faded linens. A suspicious gleam sprang into the large man’s eyes, and the Doctor’s proffered hand was ignored.

‘I am Professor Templeman.  However, nobody here is sick.  A doctor was not requested.’

     Doncha just hate when that happens?  I mean, there you are, a traveller across the millennia, and - you get a pistol shoved in your face.  Really!

Let Us Get The Next Lot Of Sc - O You Know The Drill

By this point the Allies had successfully invaded Sicily, that stepping-stone towards Italy itself, having pointed at half a dozen alternate options meanwhile.  Art!

     In the upper photo you can see Allied infantry streaming ashore yeah unto the Sicilian hinterland, and in the lower you can see where the Axis feared where the next step might be.  In strategic terms, 'being caught on the back foot'.  We now know that it was going to be the Italian mainland, but the prevaricating Axis had no definite idea and had to assume the worst.  Tee hee!

What On Earth?

As the saying goes.  Do you see wh - O you do.  Art!

     The universe is pretty Dog Buns! enormous, I think we can all agree on that, but here we have it in juxtaposition - not a word you ever expected to see today - with an incredibly small sculpture, unless that's a very large needle <checks> nope, that's an ordinary-sized needle with a very very small dinosaur.  It's on display in a Nottingham museum, alongside the real thing - Art!

Please note "KING".  None of this equality nonsense.

     Conrad is unsure what the point it, apart from being pretty cool.

 

If I Said "Chilli"

Then you'd be a tad puzzled here in This Sceptred Isle, because this sounds like one of three things.  The country - Art!

     Which seems like a kind of geographical afterthought  "O noes, we forgot the portside seaboard, whatever shall we do?"  

     Secondly, the state of being cold, a.k.a. "Chilly", which is about as far from reality as one can get these days - global warming finally catching up with the Allotment of Eden.

     And, lastly, the ferocious vegetable that developed an hideous caustic burning quality to stop livestock from eating it -

     Kinda worked against it in the case of Hom. Sap. didn't it?  Hom. Sap, you see, like to test their mettle by consuming the hottest vegetables in existence, even when quite sober.  In fact there seems to be a competition in South Canada to see whom can grow the most ridiculously hot chillies in existence, because there's never a shortage of idiots willing to eat them.  If ever a chilli-grower comes up with an "Edible Flamethrower" chilli, rest assured there will be idiots a-plenty seeking to test it.  "Yes I needed a tongue and stomach transplant but don't regret it one bit".

Finally -

Best get down to it at my desk in the Sekrit Layr, Your Humble Scribe is on the nine to five shift today, which is far preferable to the odious ten to six shift, and don't get me started on the days when we had the eleven to seven shift!