We Have A Theme!

I Can't Remember The Last Time We Did A Themed Blog

But then my memory isn't what it used to be, thanks to old age and my daily bucket of gin.

     Our theme has nothing to do with the military districts of the Byzantine Empire, sorry if you were expecting an authoritative essay on the tactics of cataphracti in the ninth century.  No, today's theme is of -

     CATAPULT!

     I dreamt this up whilst walking Edna, which Conrad regards as his Thinking Time, as I can't do anything else whilst providing madam with her daily trot.  Art!

     No, Art, do keep up. Catapults.  Get with it or - Tazer.

     TOY CATAPULT

     Here you have a child's toy catapult, together with four foam balls, just to ensure they give the right message of not inflicting pain and suffering on other Hom. Sap.  Frankly Conrad is surprised these things aren't illegal, because since they were available to small cruel children they've been used with steel ball bearings or marbles, in order to best bruise your hapless victims.  Er - so I'm told.

     

Marble and ball-bearing resistant

     Why do we have a (clothed*) Greek statue?  Because 'Catapult' comes from the Greek <hack spit>, "Katapeltes", itself derived from "Kata" meaning "Down" and "Pallein" meaning "To hurl".  Okay, bring on the -

BAIT CATAPULT

The logic behind these engines of destruction is that an angler might well want to fling fish food further than fists can Pallein, so he resorts to one of these -

     No kidding, whilst a toy catapult might inflict a painful bruise, these things can inflict serious injury, especially if using rusty nuts and bolts to So I'm told.  Used in the manner to which they ought to be, you could tempt trout out at fifty yards.  Or, you could go to Morrisons and buy a fillet instead.  Next!

SIEGE CATAPULT

In the pre-gunpowder era, that is up to the <thinks> fifteenth century, sieges were principally conducted using weapons that utilised kinetic energy instead of chemical energy.  Art!

     As you may be able to make out from the first image, the arm was cranked down by a couple of sweating crewmen against the torsion power of coiled fibres, until it rested horizontally.  At this point you needed nothing more sophisticated than a large rock to put in the cradle, which made it cheap to run.  Once 'loaded' the ratchet was released and the arm shot up, dislodging the ammunition when it hit the crossbar.  Typically this produced a shallow trajectory to impact, quite sufficient for dealing with curtain walls that normally formed fixed defences in those days.

Next!

LAUNCH CATAPULT

This one will take a bit of explanation, so stick with me.  Aircraft carriers.  Some of the most monstrous marine machines ever built, I'm sure you'll admit.  Let's have a look at one of the earlier models - Art!

     A British invention, of course.  The idea was to keep your aircraft below decks until needed, then send them upstairs and have them fly off the flight-deck, to commit acts of mayhem upon the enemy.  Let's have a more modern version.  Art!

     Things were going swimmingly until some fool invented the jet engine, which created a problem, because jet aircraft needed a much longer take off than a turboprop.  Aircraft carriers would have needed to be twice as long, which was hugely impractical, not to mention expensive.  The solution?  A catapult.  Art!

     No, it doesn't look very impressive, does it?  Except that, like an iceberg, there's a lot of stuff you can't see underneath, although perhaps a swan is a better analogy with all the frantic sub-surface activity.  Art!

     The catapult physically accelerates the aircraft that's hooked up to the 'shoe', giving it a right old Pallein off the flight deck, sufficiently fast that it can thus take the air instead of having an early bath.  The steam catapult was orders of magnitude better than the simple physical model used previously, but of course - obviously! - Hom. Sap. cannot stop thinking up better ways of building either a mousetrap or monstrous marine monster, and the South Canadians now have an electromagnetic catapult.  Hello 'Admiral Kuznetsov'** are you reading this?

"The Sea Of Sand"

I know what you're thinking.  "How can Conrad work in catapults in a tale of aliens and the Second Unpleasantness?" well just you wait matey.  This extract is completely out of sequence, sue me if you don't like it.

‘Now!’ snapped the Doctor.  Capriccio revved the engine up to a metallic scream as the dubious soldiers stood watching.

Making a nasty scrunch in the process, Capriccio engaged first gear.  The rear axle instantly accelerated from zero to twenty miles per hour, snatching the cable taut, catapulting the plank over the pintle and hurling the petrol tin in a high arc over the desert.

Splinters flew from the abused plank when the cable pulled it apart and Capriccio hastily turned the engine off.

Tam’s comments were unprintable.  Lieutenant Llewellyn stood open- mouthed at the tin soaring into the dusky sky.  Dominione pinched his forearm, just to make sure.

‘Not high enough,’ said Davey, turning to glare at the Doctor, who merely winked and shouldered his rifle.

‘You’ll never hit it!’ said Davey, bluntly.

Calmly taking aim, adjusting for windage, deflection and heat haze, the Doctor squeezed the trigger and hit the tin at the top of it’s arc, the glowing tracer round knocking a plume of ignited petrol into the air.  The additional energy of the bullet’s impact tumbled the tin further out and downwards, landing on the crates of shells in a glare of burning petrol.

          ‘I didn’t just see that, did I?’ asked Tam.  ‘I mean, that’s just not possible, is it?’

          This time Davey’s comments were unprintable.

          Roger stared at the fire, then back at the Doctor.

          ‘Where – where the hell did you learn to shoot like that!  People at Bisley would kill to be that accurate.’

          The Doctor made an expansive gesture of false modesty.

          ‘Oh, Sergeant Lucy.  Royal Irish Rifles.  The retreat from Mons.’

          There wasn’t time for Roger to argue that the retreat from Mons occurred a good twenty-seven years previously.  Instead they dispersed the vehicles, knowing that to leave the wadi they must travel north to begin with.

     Okay, possibly stretching definitions a little.  So sue me.

A Little Musical Critique

For why, who did a song called "Catapult" but R.E.M.  I don't think we've turned the Eye Of Conrad upon them before, but we can certainly start now!

We were little boys, we were little girls

Okay, I'm already concerned about where this is going.  Potential child abuse, matey.

It's nine o'clock, don't try to turn it off

Er - how do you turn off time?  Unless you have a big blue police box

Cowered in a hole, ope your mouth

Say what?  Where did the hole come from?  Why cower?  What is 'Ope'?

Did we miss anything, did we miss anything

I think you turned over two pages at once, personally

Did we miss anything, did we miss anything

Yes.  Common sense and logic

Catapult (catapult), catapult

Catapult (catapult), catapult

Six catapults?  How many hands do you have?

  Currently grooving to a totally badass live version of "O.D.'d On Life Itself" by Blue Oyster Cult, just FYI.

     ANYWAY there's more to the REM song, but we've hit the Adjusted Compositional Ton, so our work here is done.  DONE!

*  Harder to find than you'd imagine.  You see?  You see what pains we go to in order to remain SFW?

**  Conrad is not superstitious, but the 'Admiral Kuznetsov' has been so unlucky for so long that he strongly suspects it's cursed.