To Be Painfully Honest
The 'Red' bit would have been glowing radioactive ash, not snow. Although when both fall from the heavens it can be difficult to distinguish between them, until you try making and eating an ash McFlurry.
For Lo! we are back upon the subject of bombs, including the hoohoodillies that make the biggest bangs ever.
Before we begin that topic, a confession from Your Humble Scribe. My debit card expires next week, and I've not had a replacement. These are sent out four weeks ahead of expiry date, and I know this because I checked the Nationwide website. Art!
Bank cards are boring. Have a nuclear explosion instead!
So, I sojourned into Babylon Lite this morning, mosied up to the counter clerk and informed them of the missing replacement card.
The young Asian lad behind the counter gave Conrad a pitying look and agreed that the card did indeed expire in July.
July 2024.
Ooops.
'Twasn't a wasted journey, as Sainsbo's is up at that end of town, so I went and got cardboard storage boxes. Unhappily for Conrad, the small ones I wanted were out of stock, so I got the next size up. Art!
These come in Small, Medium and Awkward. Try holding a package like this with a bag of shopping, a rucksack and your mobile phone with it's e-ticket for the bus. Still, it did boost my step count.
ANYWAY Conrad was standing at the bus stop in Lesser Sodom after a quick trip to the Co-Op to get a reduced cauliflower, wondering what to put in today's Intro, and it struck me that the word 'Retarded' has become out-of-bounds in polite society. Conrad, not having a PC bone in his body, has no idea when this became a thing. It did, however, remind him of the eccentric design of This Sceptred Isle's 'Yellow Sun' nuclear bomb. Art!
No, there's nothing missing; no detachable aerodynamic nose-cone or shield. What you see is a deliberate design choice, because the lack of a pointed nose retards the bomb's descent, sufficiently to allow the bomber that dropped it to escape without harm. This is simpler and more efficient than having a parachute deploy, and it also eliminates any of the shock-waves that accumulate around a pointed bomb as it drops.
The 'Green Grass' and 'Red Snow' were what the RAF coyly called the 'Physics package', meaning the actual warhead inside the casing.
Retarded bombs were widely used in the Vietnam Unpleasantness, both to allow South Canadian aircraft to drop them at low level, and also for accuracy reasons. Art!
As you can see, these have a cruciform drogue instead of fins, meaning they will drop near-vertically as they approach the ground. This is a relatively complex mechanism in comparison with simple fins. Art!
An alternative is to use a parachute, as the South Canadians did with their hoohoodillies, but then you get potential problems with the chute 'roman candling' or being subject to wind shear. Art!
Conrad, as forementioned lacking an inner censor and blithely unaware of what PC means beyond 'Personal Computer', nevertheless avoided titling this afternoon's post as "When Retarded Was Essential" because that might attract the wrong sort of audience, which is to say none. It would, in fact, have bombed. Which, confusingly, is the opposite of going down a bomb. Art!
A bombe. Close enough.
Guess Who's Not A Happy Bunny?
Here's a clue: he looks like a Tribble-topped beer barrel in a suit. No! Not Sir Les Patterson (whom I always found funnier than Dame Edna) - Donald Trump.
Why so? Well, he was already under the hammer for 37 offences in the stolen documents case; or, as he would have it, the "Stollen" documents case. Art!
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| DON'T TAUNT ME WITH WHAT I CANNOT HAVE! |
It has now come to light that Citizen Trump attempted to get one of his minions to delete security camera footage, who apparently refused and whom is now bearing testimony against Agent Orange, who is probably having one of his worst weekends ever. Despite claiming that being indicted is 'fun' and that the trials will reveal how he really won the 2020 election. Presumably they will also find life on Mars, bring peace to the Middle East and reverse global warming. Art!
Conrad is tempted to read this
A Little Blowing Of One's Own Trumpet
As you should surely know, Conrad does an awful lot of talking on the phone to members of the public. This does not come naturally to the big fat biffer, said Mister Hand, bec
EXCUSE ME! Don't hijack my own item, you treacherous appendage!
I meant merely to state that a recent caller said my phone voice was 'theraputic', which I will take as a compliment.
That is all.
Conrad's Plans Went Agley
As you may be aware, Your Humble Scribe likes to occasionally visit regimental museums, and had been planning a jaunt to foreign territory, across the Pennines to the fair city of York, which you can spend a week exploring. All the stuff worth seeing is in a quite compact area.
Alas, no, the RMT had other plans. Art!
They chose today of all days <sad face>. Before you cavil at these evil Bolsheviks, remember that if they're on strike they don't get paid. Conrad cynically wonders how any pay increase is going to compensate for all those strike days. O and make sure you don't strike next Saturday, chaps. Thanks in advance.
"City In The Sky"
Our peripatetic Time Lord is looking to find out what's going on in the orbital arcologies above Earth, expecting Ace to go a-nosying too.
‘Stay here with the Warden and don’t
antagonise anyone,’ ordered the Doctor, well aware that Ace would ignore his
instructions and start to nosey around the instant his back was turned – which
was what he wanted, without wanting to say so in front of the Warden and the
senior Founder.
‘Let me show you the inside of Arc One,’
began
Taking advantage of a pause in the
conversation, the Doctor jumped in.
‘Ah, yes.
Return to Earth. When do you see that happening?’
For
a minute,
‘Less than a generation. Twenty years at the most, maybe twenty five -
perhaps even thirty in extremis. No more that that.’
‘And in the meantime you continue to
practice the best of what Earth has to offer.’
‘Exactly!
We have a garden society here, Doctor.
Arranged in perfect order, to a definite end, according to exactly
specified lines. A garden society,’ and
she threw that arm gesture again.
Watch out for weeds, matey.
Finally -
The weather has been a bit changeable today, as is the wont with a typical British summer. Don't get me started on this supposed 'heatwave' we were supposed to suffer/experience/enjoy <delete where applicable>. When I came out of Sainsbo's there had been a cloudburst, and me in my Skechers. They are supremely comfortable but dangerously tractionless on any wet, smooth surface, such as the flagged pavements all the way back to the bus station. My typing this is proof that I was wary enough to not break my neck. Art!
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| Still life with pensioner |
And that's all folks!
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