Bulldozey

No!  That Is Not A Typo

Let me just hammer out a tune on the Remote Nuclear Detonator to prove my point <global background count increases slightly as a result>.

     There!  I feel so much better for that.  Doubtless you wondering what a large piece of mobile construction plant has to do with radioactive zombies in tanks.  Art!

     Conrad has never seen this film, yet remembers fellow students at school describing it back in the Seventies when it appeared on national television.  It's a made-for-television film taken from a short sci-fi story by the eminently respectable Theodore Sturgeon, where a possessed bulldozer attempts to kill a construction crew on a remote Pacific island.

     But no, that's not what this Intro is about.  Art!

     Meet a bulldozer with a one-ton armoured applique of concrete and steel plate, which a complete bampot drove around town in, destroying thirteen buildings and causing $7 million of property damage.  He seems to have been a raging bottomhole who hated everyone and everything, and thankfully the only person killed in his rampage was himself; he got his 'Killdozer''s tread stuck in a basement and couldn't move.  So - he killed himself.  

     But no!  That's not what this Intro's about, either.

     There was a band who took their name from the film - Art!

     Of course - obviously! - this Intro isn't about them, either.  Conrad had never heard of them before now, so they cannot have troubled the music world to any great extent.
     Let me turn to my Collins Concise for background here.  "Bulldozer: a powerful tractor fitted with caterpillar tracks and a blade at the front, used for moving earth, rocks, etc."  Derivation?  "C19, prob. from BULL and DOSE."

     It's that first word we're looking at: BULL.  The CC defines this as: "A very large, strong or aggressive person." and also "Any male bovine animal."

     Now, unlike This Sceptred Isle, South Canada has enormous National Parks that are home to sorts of animals.  Deer, wolves, bears - and bison.  Art!

     This is a male bison, a.k.a. a bull.  You can probably tell where this is going already ...

     The largest bulls can tilt the scales at a ton each, have horns up to two feet long, and in extremis can manage a sprightly 35 miles per hour.  They are normally placid beasts IF YOU KEEP YOUR DISTANCE and do not seek trouble or startle them, because a herd of startled bison will stampede.  Do not be fooled by the fact that they eat grass not meat, nor that they normally stand around chewing the cud.  As innumerable park signs inform, they are UNPREDICTABLE WILD ANIMALS.  Female cows with calves are especially unpredictable as they can take offence at Hom. Sap. getting close to their offspring, and Mama Bison is quite as deadly as Mama Bear.  Art!

Courtesy Karma Crow

     Here you see a couple of 'Tourons' (Park staff slang for 'Tourist Morons') getting ridiculously close to a bison, with a person at port trying to explain to them that they ought to back off smartish.  Note the small child they are holding up for the bison to charge at.  Art!

Mister Bull charges

     The Tourons immediately flee and leave the child behind as bait, so the bull can gore Little Timmy to death, just so long as they get away.  The helpful stranger then plucks the infant from beneath the trampling hooves and slicing horns, getting gored in the arm as a result.  As he and the child flee, Touron #1 and Touron #2 simply stand there, seemingly unaware that 1) their child is now safe and off-screen and 2) they are no more than 20 feet from an angry bull bison.  Art!

     This, I think, is the poster-child for 'Bull Dozey".
     Conrad has no time to chase up this story and the consequences; the gallant rescuer survived just fine but Conrad wonders if the Tourons got a fine and a visit from CPS.     

Once Again, What On Earth?

Yes, we are back with "The Daily Beast" and their parade of cut-price mystery tat, so please identify this for me, if you  will.  Art!

     There's nothing to give it a sense of scale, so one can only guess.  A belt for an incredibly thin person?  Security lock for valuable frisbees?  Bottle cap securer for paranoid drinkers in nightclubs?  Only you can tell!

Make Mine Manglement

We've mentioned the Law Of Unintended Consequences today, now let me illustrate the Peter Principle, which is that idiots will rise to a position where their incompetence can sink a business.  Art!

Er - quite

     OP worked as the Chief Financial Officer at a business, alongside the owner's brother-in-law, for four years.  Between the two of them, they managed to restrain the idiot owner (hereafter "TEO"), got rid of his secretary/on-off-lover, prevented him from sexually harassing the female staff, ran a successful bonus scheme and quadrupled sales, incidentally turning the bottom line from red to well into the black. Art!

     Sadly for all involved, the BIL retired and TEO took out his childish temper tantrums on OP.

     OP promptly left for a better job with a better manager.

     Within 2 months TEO cancelled the bonus program.

     Within the next 3 months the sales director and half his staff quit and went to work for a direct competitor.

     Within another 2 months TEO had to declare bankruptcy.  From healthy profit to putting the shutters up in 7 months, that really takes a definite skill-set.  Well done TEO!

"City In The Sky"

We are now hearing about the ingenious improvisations that Arcology One's crew had undertaken to try and get back to Earth.

It took them a long time, a considerable investment of energy and materials, but Arcology One had built three ballistic gliders for re-entry and landing.  A landing site had been selected – South Western Australia.  The island continent had escaped the destructive effects of the war almost totally.  Thus, the first glider would land and remain in contact with Arc One, communicating with the locals, seeing if they were friendly, neutral or hostile.  Given time – a long time! – the population of Arc One would be brought down. 

     Davros looked sad and anxious, and Ace expected to hear that the glider crew had been slaughtered by paranoid locals.

     ‘They landed near a place called Forrest, population about two hundred or so.  It used to have an airport that died off before the Little Crash thanks to economics, so there was a nice long flat area to land safely on.  The locals were friendly – wanted to know everything about us, how many there were of us, what state we were in – they were desperately keen when dentists and aspirin were mentioned!  Everything was going well, and then the radio link suddenly died.’

     ‘Oh?’ said the Doctor, quietly.  ‘Were they just setting your glider crew up for an ambush?’

     ‘No, we didn’t think so.  We spoke to some of the locals over the radio link.  They seemed genuinely keen on our arriving, especially when we mentioned things like dentistry and anaesthetics.  Even worse came with the second glider.  They selected another landing site, closer to the coast and we tracked them down to five thousand metres – and then they blew up in mid-air.’

         Sinister, nicht wahr? 

"The War Illustrated"

A case of life imitating life.  The Allies faced a long, slow slog up the Italian peninsula, which seems to have been designed by Slartibartfast to be as easily defensible as possible, whilst the weather was as bad as possible.  You might consider this a Second Front, quite truthfully, which of course - obviously! - simply wasn't good enough for the tiresome Sinisters.  Art!

     Here we see a few of the less conventional weapons in use in Italy.  The photo at top is of South Canadian GIs using a Teuton 75mm anti-tank gun, which was an excellent bit of kit, in a class that the Allies didn't really have any equivalent of; their anti-tank guns were either larger or smaller than this.

     Below, to port, are British gunners using one of the monster South Canadian 'Long Tom' 155 mm guns, which were donated but sparingly to us, as the South Canadians liked them lots and wanted them all to themselves.

     To starboard is one of those Teuton engineering innovations that was novel, complex, expensive and useless.  It was a miniature armoured vehicle guided by wires, crammed with high explosive and easily stopped by small arms fire, as seen here.  Either they were immobilised by gunfire or the wires were shredded.

     And at bottom, we have some Motor Gun Carriages, which were 75mm guns stuck on top of an M3 half-track as an expedient.  The South Canadians had retired them by the time this photo was taken, so they are in British service on the grounds that any artillery piece is better than no artillery piece.  Art!

M3 minus camo

Finally -

Better get downstairs and sort out a bit of tea.  Not loose-leaf Darjeeling, I've already had about half a gallon today.  Perhaps a horribly strong coffee?

Tot siens!