More Hogweed Than Oak

I Know, It's A Bit Cryptic As A Title

Deal with it, it's how we, the editorial team, roll around here.  Firstly, 'Hogweed' is nothing to do with 'Hogwarts', but by invoking the latter we can proceed with a nice click-baity Harry Potter reference, which will sucker passers-by into reading this scrivel with muted disbelief.  Art!

     Perhaps I should have been a little more explicit, for we are talking about the Giant Hogweed, which is chemical warfare in a plant.  Art!

 More weedy than hoggy, frankly

     The plant is not native to the UK, and in fact was imported from Ruffia.  Thanks, Ruffians*.  Initially it was planted as an ornamental variety, which is rather like having a live fused artillery shell as a paperweight.  The sap, you see, will cause chemical burns on exposed skin in sunlight, a process known as 'phytotoxicity'.  The burns can spontaneously reappear months or years later.  Yes, truly, thanks Ruffia.  Problems began when the ornamental version got loose in the wild, because there are no natural inhibitors to compete with or eat it.  Art!

No, he's not tiny.  It is a 'giant', after all

     Also, he shouldn't be going anywhere near it with bare arms.  Plonker.

     Heracleum mantegazzianum, to give it the <hack spit> Latin name, is also one of the few plants to have a song written about it - "The Return Of The Giant Hogweed" by Peter Gabriel-era Genesis.  There it becomes akin to the triffid, having a hive consciousness and an enmity towards Hom. Sap. Not quite as terrifying as John Wyndham's creation because Peter's are static.  He warbles on about how they become immune to herbicides; yes, Pete, but they can still be cut down or burnt wit

" 'Burn'?  Does something need burning?"

      <sighs>  No, Mac, no.  

    ANYWAY of course - obviously! - none of this has to do with what I really wanted to bang on about, which is -

      Plant an acorn, you get an oak - eventually.  Plant a poisonous seed, you get a Giant Hogweed.  There.  Do you see the (slightly strained) analogy with today's title?
     For it would seem that a global network of the usual swivel-eyed conspiranoid loonwaffles have deliberately gone out of their way to harrass Oxford County Council officials.  OCC, you see, intends to cut down on private cars in the city, by imposing traffic filters at peak times.  No private cars are allowed unless they have a permit.  Travel by bike or bus or tram or jetpack is fine.  Art!

Not really designed for cars

     The tinfoil hat brigade, who universally dwell in their parent's basements, immediately translated this as 'Climate Lockdown OMG!!!" and started claiming that people would be imprisoned in their own homes, forced to pay an oxygen tax and their televisions were watching them.

     Rather less amusingly, various councillors were threatened with death, which is easy enough to threaten when bravely wielding a keyboard.  The Thames Valley Police have gotten involved, which will probably send Tinfoil Hat Wearer into a frothing frenzy of self-justification that They are out to get him, because They Can't Handle The Truth, and not because he's a Kreplach! idiot.  These bampots will be exactly the same ones who claimed 5G phone masts caused Covid.  Art!

     The Ruffians are probably bank-rolling these intellectual sloths.  Thanks, Ruffians.

     

Hey, I Had An Epiphany!

You recall that yesteryon I was banging on about how Yogi Bear and Boo-Boo were going to bring about a supervolcanic apocalypse that would render half the world an ashy desolate barren lifeless desert?  I then realised that these two ursine characters were the couriers of devastation.  They were, in fact, Bad News Bears.  Art!

Look at 'em, radiating pure evil

     I write this because, rubbing my hands with glee, because -

Because!

     Sometimes I'm so clever I impress even me.

Those Deadly Toys

Yes yes yes, we'll get to Legal Eagle's list in just a moment.  Conrad remembers a real jump-the-shark moment from the television series "Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea", where the crew are threatened by - er - a bunch of toys.  Art!

Episode "The Terrible Toys"

     Moving swiftly along, Devin's next target was the "Swing Wing", which Conrad has never heard of, and with good reason, since it was removed from sale not that long after such sales began.  Art!

     Essentially it was a cap, from which a spinning rod was attached, and attached to the rod were two pieces of fabric with a weight at the end.  The idea was for children to whirl these around their head by dint of vigorous shaking.

     WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG!

     Quite a lot, actually, including spinal injuries, concussion and <drum roll please> cerebral haemorrhages.  As one wag had it, Brain Damage In A Box.

"The Sea Of Sand"

We briefly visit more conventional military matters here, before switching back to the alien and uncanny.

Lieutenant Murray looked back at his small column of transport:  “Murraycol”, short for Murray Column.  A lorried infantry company in Ford CMP’s, two Daimler armoured cars, and a section of Bren Carriers, all led by him in one of the new American runabouts, a GP, pronounced “Jeep”.

          ‘Off to the arse end of nowhere, eh sir?’ asked his driver.  Murray tried not to grin at the description.

          ‘Orders, Corporal, orders.’  Which were to travel to, and re-occupy, the FSD at Mersa Martuba, where the garrison had carelessly allowed the Eyeties to take over.  ‘Shouldn’t be too much trouble.  Show up and shout, howzat.’

  

Eighteen: The Snake on Square Ninety-Nine

 The Doctor knew that there were hotter places in the known Universe than the Sahara.  Many, many hotter places.  Why, within the Solar system alone there was Venus, where lead boiled in the daytime, and Mercury, where the sunside experienced –

          ‘Not very persuasive, are we, Doctor?’ he chided himself.  He had travelled under cover of darkness to the far west of Makin Al-Jinni, before daylight broke in the sky and pinned him to the sands like an insect on a slide.  Now, feeling the twin problems of heat and dehydration, he wondered about where else he had visited that might be hotter.

          ‘Vulcania, of course.  The Earth of Project Inferno, after project failure.  Arrakis.  The Arabian deserts.’

     Yes, that Arrakis.  Don't tell Frank Herbert.  And that title refers to the game Snakes And Ladders, which was also a corking track by the band TV21.

Aliena Againa

You remember, the 'solution' to Ol' Dot's crossword 'clue' yesteryon?  I said I'd come back to it and now I have.  Talk about obscure!  The title is the surname of a minor Roman family who came to prominence in 454 BC, and whom then vanished into the mists of time for over 500 years.  Now, HOW exactly were we supposed to know that?  Art!

     This is the only relevant thing I could find.  Note Roman's (how ironic he's named 'Roman'!) surname, which is Ukrainian.

Finally -

T'others in The Mansion are talking about going out to do a modicum of shopping, so Conrad is going to have to stick his courage to the glue and take Edna walkies, even if it is cold, wet and raining.  I blame the Ruffians, they sent the weather straight from Siberia, the pikers.

*  Another black mark against them.