Toot The Flute

 Conrad Has Trouble Remembering All The Rabbit Holes He Dives Down -

 - to come up with an inspiration like this one.  You see, from somewhere in the fetid depths of the mile-deep flotsam that constitutes my mind, I recalled the artistic term "Zauberflöte", which is Teuton for "Magic Flute".

     Now, I know what you're thinking, because you have transparent heads, and No! we're not going to bash you over the head with classical opera.  Instead we will bash you over the head with - well, quite what it was remains to be seen.  Art!

<Conrad is temporarily lost for words>

     That big yellow-yeaded galloot is H R Pufnstuf, who is - er - both a dragon and the Mayor of Living Island, where also resides Wilhemina Witchipoo, who (no surprise here) is a witch, with designs on young shipwrecked Jimmy, seen in the background.

     No!  WASH OUT YOUR FILTHY MINDS!  Art?

     It was because Jimmy was the proud possessor of Freddie, the magic flute, which Wilhemina was determined to steal.  She probably had no idea of the market value of a second-hand silver flute, the poor dear.

     "H.R. Pufnstuf", to an adult eye, seems to have been written by a team who had found a drugs stash, done the lot and washed it down with a bottle of bourbon, and then attacked their typewriters.  Is that low-brow enough for you?

     Of course, there is always that modern device that Philip K. Dick would have loved, the Magic Smoke Flute as we here at BOOJUM! hilariously dubbed it.  Imagine it, you get rid of all that wasteful paper and tobacco and filters, and get right down to inhaling the addictive compounds!  Art!

Each toke is a day off your life.

     If we stretch the definition of 'flute' a little, then we can also rope in the Time Lords, most especially the second iteration of The Doctor, once described as a 'cosmic hobo'.  He was fond of putting out a tune when he needed a bit of reflective time.  Art!

CAUTION!  Do NOT play "Frere Jaques".
Or you will surely die.

     Don't laugh, it's a crucial plot Mcguffin in "The Three Doctors", you know, that one where the first three iterations get together reluctantly and squabble to amusing effect.  Doctors Two and Three try to force the super-energised flute on Omega, because he hates reed instruments the flute is still made of matter, and our adventurers are in an anti-matter universe.  Oooopsie.  Art!

Omega a tad reluctant, I fear

     Given that, IIRC, 4 grams of anti-matter interacting with matter yields an explosion of 120 kilotons, a 100 gram flute would generate a 3 megaton detonation, which would certainly spoil the day of anyone incautious enough to stand next to it.

     Lastly, we must genuflect to Wolfy (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to you), and his opera "The Magic Flute", which seems to have set the scene for all subsequent enchanted reed and woodwind instruments.  Art!

       This is Tamino, a babe-magnet if ever there was one.  Unfortunately for the continued integrity of his epidermis, he is lost in a foreign land and being pursued by a serpent, which is not really the normal behaviour of a snake - probably poetic licence at work.  Art!

Herpetologists are not impressed

 
     Matey, being a bit of a big girls blouse, faints.  He is saved by three ladies, attendants to the Queen Of The Night, who of course - obviously! - get a bit of a pash on about him.  Having seen off the serpent, they reluctantly take their leave.  Art!

     I know, I know - an absence of flute.  Shocking!

     Motley - get out the oboe, I feel like playing a sinister solo.

I Missed A Trick

Yesteryon's thrill-ride atop an 84 bus was heralded as "Trial By Tyre" and Your Humble Scribe quite forgot to go into detail about "Trial By Fire", which was one of the Medieval methods of trying a person for major crimes, being a sub-set of the "Trial By Ordeal".  Art!

CAUTION!  Do not try at home

     No, it's not a wooden stick, it's a bar of iron heated up to being red hot, which is one of the methods of trialling a person.  The other variant was having to walk at least nine feet over plowshares heated up to red hot.  Unsurprisingly, the suspected perpetrator usually died as a result of deep tissue damage and infection.

     O the good old days.

Back To The Sinai

And "Machine Gunner 1914 - 1918".  If you recall, the last vignette I detailed about this work had the machine gunners of 162 Brigade going out to tackle Turkish raiding parties in the trackless wastes of the Sinai in 1916.  Our valiant compatriot describes the surroundings:

" - glaring sun, plagues of flies and mosquitoes, with heat of 122 degrees in the shade, and there was precious little shade ...  From Kantara a railway was eventually built across one hundred miles of waterless desert."  Art!

     This is the map we used previously and shows where the railway and water pipeline went from and ended up.  This was critical for supplying troops in the field, as there was no body of water to be found anywhere, and inconstant springs or oases were simply insignificant when compared to the total amount of water required for large bodies of troops.  Logistics, you see, logistics.  Art!

Beersheba

"The Sea Of Sand"

We're definitely winding-down with this one.  Sarah and the Doctor have taken leave of the Libyan desert of 1941.

Epilogue:  No Thank You But Paper Instead

 ‘Mistress!’ greeted K9, a sure sign that the Time Lords had finished their electronic paralysis of the robot dog.

‘Don’t try to curry favour with me!’ huffed Sarah.  ‘We could have used you out there.’

Like a mother hen, the Doctor fussed and checked over the TARDIS consoles, quite oblivious to what his companions were up to.

‘Oh, I say, look at this!’ enthused Sarah, having come across a collection of papers lying on the TARDIS central console.  They hadn’t been there when the duo regained the spaceship’s interior.

          ‘Eh? Oh.  Hmm.  I do wish the Time Lords would stop messing about with my TARDIS,’ grumbled the Doctor.  ‘Does it say thank you?’

          ‘No,’ replied Sarah, slowly and doubtfully.

          ‘Typical!’ muttered the Doctor, setting co-ordinates.  ‘A little gratitude once in a while doesn’t hurt.’

Sarah perused the top document, which seemed to be taken from a sequence, since it began in mid-sentence and didn’t have a title.

     I've got to drag it out a bit longer.  Sorry*!

Bring On The Popcorn

Hmmmmm the ripples are spreading.  You may know that Disney in Florida is currently in a spat with that state's Governor, Something De Santis, who thought he could appeal to the masses by going after Disney and being dead hard and cool and ruthless because he was the Guvnah.

     Except not so much.  Disney is a global business with very deep pockets and a lot of high-powered lawyers, and they are not backing down in the face of what they see as illegal bullying.  Art!

     It's possible that Guvnah Des miscalculated, thinking that Disney cannot possibly quit Florida as they have too much invested there.  As others have pointed out, there are other states such as Georgia and North Carolina who would get down on their bended knees and sacrifice their firstborn to get Disney to move to their state.  Tax breaks, soft loans, priority zoning, grateful work forces, lack of hurricanes - there's a long list of what might tempt the House of Mouse to begin cutting the sod somewhere else whilst letting Orlando run down and close down bit-by-bit.  They've already cancelled a £800 million campus that was due to open soon.

     This one has legs!

Some People Have Entirely TOO MUCH Time On Their Hands

Yes yes yes, I know that's hilariously ironic, sue me if you want to.

     A couple of days ago Conrad came across a surely-AI created set of portraits of "Star Wars" characters, done in Baroque style, which were rather amusing, and which the viewers seemed to like.  Art!

     And with that, we are most surely done.  DONE!

*  Not remotely sorry.