QUIVER WITH FEAR -

At The MORDOR DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WORKS!

You should, by now, be familiar with the uphill work of the Mordor Tourist Board, which we bravely promote here on BOOJUM!  A harder-working bunch of people would be difficult to find, bless them, thanks to what they have to work with.  Art!

"Ideal marshmallow-toasting opportunities!"

     We have touched on the architecture of Barad-Dur, the Dark Tower that was Sauron's home-from-home, in previous blogs, concentrating on the actual structure itself, but there are still questions remaining about it, prompted by my dabbling in construction terms recently.  Art!

     We know that the Dark Tower was constructed originally over a period of six hundred years, then overthrown, and then re-built in the Third Age.  There is a question of concept here behind this mega-project: was it a fortress (and armoury and dungeon and prison) that had a finished design plan, merely one that took six hundred years to complete?  Or, did it merely evolve, unplanned or with minimal oversight, continually growing horizontally and vertically?

     Conrad would argue that a building of this size and complexity wasn't simply thrown up at random; there would have been extensive plans and schematics outlining the process, with timelines and estimates and survey information.  In fact there must have been a whole library of same for such an enormous structure.

     Here an aside.  As mentioned above, the best-guess estimate of the DT's height is five thousand feet, a useful metric because that's about twice the height of the Burj Khalifa, currently the tallest structure in the world.  Art!

     Of course - obviously! - this was thrown up in a matter of years, managing to overcome considerable technical problems along the way, thanks to twenty-first century technology.  Sauron's minions have access only to medieval technology, so it's no wonder they took so long to run up the first iteration of the DT.

     So, proof that a MDPU exists lies in the re-construction of this edifice, because once again the builders had access to the thousands, if not tens of thousands, of parchments and papers showing the "As Built" progress along the way.  These would be used to mirror the original methods and designs.  O, Ol' Saury did have a few advantages that the BK construction companies didn't have: magic, for one, which can hand-wave away all sorts of objections from proper project managers; absolutely no health or safety regulations, which always speeds things up; the presence of hulking great trolls alongside endless legions of squealing orcs; Nazguls to act as flying cranes and to put the wind up all the minions.  Art!

Also, no trade unions

     This is another useful indicator of the MDPW's existence.  How were those Black Gates designed?  You don't really think that they were just built in situ, do you?  No, they had a great big stack of design specs ten inches thick, and would have been trialled in miniature (you know, like "Mythbusters") to pass proof of concept.  After all, if your schedule slips due to a design flaw that strips gears from the spindle mechanism because it doesn't work properly when scaled up, you need something to back you up when approaching the Dark Throne with trembling knee and quavery voice.  Now, the MDPW would be far better placed to take such an action than, oooooh, say a bunch of Haradrim contractors.  For one, ol' Saury's minions know better than to try and stiff him via schedule over-runs and shoddy materials.

     Then there is the maintenance of Mordor's physical infrastructure.  Art!

     You can see the network of roads in the upper picture, on the Plateau of Gorgoroth, and in the lower picture you can see what an awful place it is.  In order to move armies across it swiftly without coming to harm, the roads need to be kept in good condition, which the MDPW would manage, both by regular inspection (by certified civil engineers) and a timetable of rolling maintenance.  Not only roads, but bridges, culverts, caves and caverns would also be within scope for the MDPW, the latter two classes being used to accommodate the legions of orcs that infest the mountain ranges in that region.  Presumably the MDPW would also source running water for said legions, plumbing it in to provide potable drinking water and for cooking*.

     Of course, I could be overthinking this ...

Meet Gobmash (BEng Civil Eng) - MDPW's Employee Of The Month!

"On The Edge"

Now for an item considerably more whimsical than construction engineering, that being the BBC's photographic essay of the same title.  A few pictures have been emphatically dull dull dull, so I've ignored them.  Let's have a more impressive one.  Art!

Courtesy Marie Bertholet

     This one is a collection of ants having a go at a droplet of jam.  One supposes if you left it there long enough they'd munch their way through the whole thing and no cleaning would be needed**.

 I Warned You, Sparky

Yesteryon we wittered on about Tacky Joe, one of DJ Satsuma's lawyers in the E. Jean Carroll case, said he would try and rein in his client's ever-flapping piehole, at the instruction of the judge in this case.

     Nope.  Not happening.  DJ Tango was on Truth Social bloviating away on two different 'Truths' about the case.

     Ooopsie.  Art!

Unamused Judge is unamused

     The judge warned Tack Joe  that any more outbursts like this, which constituted a legal liability, would mean Darth Marmalade being found in contempt of court.  Conrad is of the opinion you'd have to wire his jaws shut to stop him talking, and into a surgical restraint to prevent his typing.

     Farron, on his "Ring Of Fire" vlog, pointed out that if Citizen Trump wanted to rant and tant at EJC, he could have done it legally in court, without risking a contempt charge.  But, for some reason, DJT doesn't want to appear in a New York court.  How very strange.

"The Sea Of Sand"

Sarah and Professor Templeman have - well - stolen a truck to get to the dig at Makin al-Jinni, the better to see what the Doctor is up to.

Their first obstacle was a long, uniform mound of sand that crested above the flat desert floor, winds whipping flurries off the top and into their cab.  Templeman carefully drove up the dune at an angle, managing not to stall the truck. 

Once down the other side they saw a ghastly landscape of shattered black tanks, bomb craters, shrapnel strikes and bio-vore bodies.  This was the killing ground the Blenheim bombers had struck.

Sarah shut her eyes and gritted her teeth.  The bio-vores were vile opponents, worthy of death, but this ghastly slaughter made her feel ill.  War, she sternly told herself, is the worst possible human – no, not just human  - the worst possible sentient endeavour.

‘You can open your eyes now,’ said the Professor in a consoling tone.  When she did, the baking heat of desert gravel and rock played in her face, untainted by death or destruction.

‘What’s that?’ she asked, pointing out at the desert half a mile ahead.  What looked, bizarrely and impossibly like a river, ribboned across the unforgiving terrain.  The meandering strip grew more regular, until they reached it and recognised a “glass moat”, as the Doctor would have described it.  Ten yards across, featureless and smooth but for the sands drifting across it.

     Are they thwarted?  You'll have to read tomorrow's extract, won't you?

I Had Never Heard Of Gough Island

I bet you haven't either.  It's an incredibly remote island in the South Atlantic, home to eight million birds and seven staff from the RSPB's International Science Conservation Team, who serve 13 month tours on the island.  Art!

     One of the staff is rotating home in September so the RSPB is looking for another person to take over.  The pay's not bad - beginning at £25K - but you have to put up with extremely fierce winds, incredible amounts of rain, and no fresh food.  Anything that might be considered an invasive species is forbidden, so goodbye to fresh fruit and veg.  There are two enormous freezers that get stocked up in the swapover period to console the staff.  Art!

     It's a bit bleak, and you'd better not have any underlying health conditions, since the nearest land is Tristan de Cunha, which is itself an incredibly remote island, and it take days to get there by boat.  Art!

*  Never bathing.

**  Yes, I am a fearfully lazy slob