Chair-Raising

Yes, Matey, Proof Of Who Does The Puns Round Here

A short while ago <code for I can't remember when exactly nor can I be bothered to look> Your Humble Scribe was banging on about chairs and seats, which he treated as interchangeable.  No arguing, once again, whose blog is it?

     We can now move on to positively dangerous seats (or chairs), ones where your life is imperilled merely by the fact of placing your pulchritudinously padded posterior primly upon them.  One that instantly springs to mind is- Art!

     It looks cold and uncomfortable to me, unless you add a few cushions and throws to it, and there's the lingering worry about slicing your gluteus maximus open on a sword-edge.  However, rather than acquiring cuts in interesting places, it's the political symbolism of this particular chair (or seat) that brings havoc with it.  Perch on it and you immediately become a target for slings and arrows (also swords, daggers and poisons).  Art!

     This handy little piece of nautical kit is a 'Bosun's Chair', used at sea for tasks such as the above, and ashore for things like cleaning windows.  The most fraught use is for transfer at sea between ships, where anything going the slightest bit wrong means a prolonged dip in Davy Jone's Locker.  Also known as "Death".

     And then we come to the meat of the matter.  I did warn you about a Reddit tale concerning a chair, which escalated to Def Con 2 and the B-52 Alert Force scrambling with live nuclear missi a lot.  Conrad's not sure if he can concentrate the full force of craziness into a single Intro  as there is so much of it.  Still, let's have a go.  Art!

CAUTION! Sensible family portrayed

     Original Poster said that for years he'd brought a comfortable folding chair to family meetings, which he could pick up and carry off with him when he moved for any reason.  This was because his entire extended family thought it was hilarious to immediately move into an unoccupied chair and then refuse to move.  O the humour.

     Then, at a family gathering he left his folding chair to answer a call of nature and when he came back it had been hidden.  O what japes!  Not.  He threatened to leave if it wasn't returned there and then, and was actually heading for the door when the family realised he might not share their sense of humour about it being taken and concealed.  So the culprit, his brother-in-law, grudgingly produced it from cover.  Art!

     Broken.  BIL tried to 'fix' it and made it worse (given that it was a robust metal chair the suspicion is that he hammered it into the hiding place with a hammer). OP then informed him that he was owed $50 for the chair, took it's mangled carcass and left, after castigating the entire family for their silly chair antics over the decades.

     Later that night he sent out a mass comms on social media informing the whole extended family that he wasn't going to attend any future family functions unless they stopped being childish.  O and he expected his chair replaced.

     O AND THIS IS THE HILL HE CHOSE TO DIE ON.

     OP explained in a little more detail that he always got picked on at family events as he is the youngest, 25 at the time of posting, with siblings up to 10 years older, who also bring along spouses and kids.

     And then there was a year-long pause on Reddit.  Which is a good point to call a halt here, as we're already half-way through the blog and nowhere near the end of the Chair Of Despair.

     

Kremlin Keystone Kops Karma

Thanks to Suchomimus for pointing this hilariously ironic photo sequence out.

     Okay, you out there reading this won't have the slightest idea what a Mig-21 was, so I shall tell you: a Sinister Cold-War era fighter jet, quite nippy and handy in the skies but O! these many decades obsolete.  Art!

    This is part of Odesa Airport, home to long obsolete and un-used airframes that sit there quietly mouldering and falling apart.  Kind of a hospice for jet aircraft.  The one parked next to the grey hanger has had both wings cut off, surely a sign of wanton cruelty?  The RAFPCA needs informing.  Art!

     Yes, the Ruffians hit them with a cruise missile, because they felt the need to both look busy and impress Tsar Elevator-Shoes, being able to say that they'd destroyed 5 Ukrainian jets.

     Hmmm okay if you say so, chaps.  Destroying £3,000 worth of scrap metal with a missile costing £3,000,000 isn't going to balance the books, really, is it?  All together now: "It's all going according to plan, it's all going according to plan!"

     

"City In The Sky"

The Doctor, as usual, is listening to the native's of New Eucla and making extrapolations from quite as much as what they don't say as what they do.

     Reactions like this were exactly what the Doctor wanted to obtain – genuine human emotive responses to unpredictable triggers, which allowed him to extrapolate a set of data points.  The young man had done precisely what he’d intended, by putting a figurative foot in it.

     Doris made notes as the Doctor and Alex explained about the Dart glider, making the Euclans look up in surprise when the second glider’s fate became known.  The explanation about a particle beam weapon didn’t get off the ground, until Ace interrupted.

     ‘A ray gun.  A great big one.’

     Don hummed, Lenny made a face, Doris stopped scribbling.

     ‘Definitely not us!’ scowled Lenny.  ‘Tell ‘em, Don.’

     ‘Why d’you think we’re still stuck in the eighteen fifties?’ asked the leader.  ‘Because of the Death-Sats.  That’s why.’  He seemed to think all three would know exactly what his brusque explanation meant, then had to enlarge when he merely received three blank looks.

     ‘Death satellites.  They shoot ray guns like the one you talked about, except they go for anything electrical.  If anyone along the coast ever tried to build a turbine or a generator, or even a telegraph, the death-sats would blow them to bits.  Within a couple of hours, sometimes.’

     I think this is what's known as a 'Gigantic Red Flag'.

Thank You

Once again, Conrad brings forth a piece of mystery tat as seen on "The Daily Beast"'s advertising side-band, which seem to have a connection with an entity called 'Tempu' or somesuch.  Can't be bothered to check properly, I'll let you do that.  Art!

     This one is rather baffling, I think you'll admit.  It seems designed to dig a hole into the side of a small circular object, even if we don't have any indication of scale.  Answers in the Comments, please.

"The War Illustrated"

The illustrations I put in front of you now are from May 1944, during the prelude to D-Day when both Allies and Axis were waiting for the other shoe to drop.  Art!

          These pictures illustrate a strike by the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm on the Teuton battleship 'Tirpitz', lying up in a Norwegian fjord in hopes of remaining incognito and undetected.  Not if the local Norks spotted her.  She was always getting bombed and damaged and hunted from harbour to harbour; the Royal Navy simply detested the very thought of her and the threat she represented to Arctic convoys.  They wanted her gone, though this wasn't the time.  Art!

     Two ends of the artillery spectrum.  At top, concealed under a ton of foliage, is a 40 m.m. Bofors anti-aircraft gun, a tad forlorn as it's crew have dinner.  This was a light rapid-firing cannon that could be easily towed around by a Jeep or Morris.  Below it is a monstrous 9" gun mounted on a railway carriage, the better to move it's colossal bulk around, and it's shells, too.  Manned by an Italian crew who would have been volunteers, it is firing in support of the Allies as part of the Co-Belligerent Forces.

Finally -

I did start this blog early Sunday morning, but have only finished it Sunday mid-evening, so it can instead be Monday's blog.

Pip pip!