If We're Talking About Folk Heroes
Or wildly anachronistic folk heroes, then that title reminds me of an especially daft cartoon series from many decades ago. Actually it reminds me of an especially daft live-action series from right now, which we may come back to. Art!
"For a modern audience"
Set in the far-distant future of 3000AD, Robin and his gang of outlaws live on <ahem> 'New Sherwood Forest Asteroid' and fly around the Solar System in rocket ships. They are up against Prince John, of course - obviously! - and the Sheriff of N.O.T.T. - "National Outer-space Terrestrial Territories" which is a reach too far if you ask me. Art!
Exposed skin not good in a vacuum
It ran for three seasons, so some of you are still human some of you were happily watching it. O and because we are not above kicking anyone when they are down, let us bring on the "Robyn Good Hood" or whatever it's called. Art!
Number One with an arrow
I think the director is still having a pity party about how all the mean nasty cruel people on teh Interwebz don't like his televisual garbage, which only provokes and stokes even more of them to dog-pile on his show.
ANYWAY we are supposed to be concentrating on Davy Crockett the man - the anti-Davy Crockett Rocket we'll get to in a moment - who alternated between a career in politics, hunting b'ars and being a soldier. He was that rare breed of politician who walks the walk after talking the talk; when he lost his seat in Congress he informed his electorate that they could go to Hell, whilst he would go to Texas. Art!
He didn't go in a mere fit of pique. Texas in 1836 was engaged in a war against Mexico, and Davy turned up there with 30 other soldiers and 'Old Betsy', which you see above. He ended up in the garrison at the Alamo and was killed there with all the other defenders. Art!
A bit of a Pyrrhic victory as the defenders were outnumbered about 10 to 1 and held out for 13 days.
ANYWAY let me introduce the M28/M29 'Davy Crockett', which was as far away as possible from the crack-shot clad in buckskins. Art!
This blunt instrument came out of the march of technology, which was able to reduce the size of nuclear warheads to a size sufficient to be fired from a recoilless rifle. Also driving development was the South Canadian Army's desire to have man-portable sub-kiloton nukes as a form of battlefield artillery, short range stuff that was distinctly out of the strategic purview of their hated rivals, the South Canadian Air Force. Art!
"Unroll 1,000 yard command wire"
These puppies came with a range of just over a mile to four miles, with the crew being advised to launch from dead ground or under cover, to avoid getting fried or disintegrated from their own weapon when it went 'pop'. It could be configured to give a blast of either 0.01 Kt or 0.02 Kt - i.e. 10 or 20 tons of explosive, or a truck-convoy-of-HE-equivalent. Art!
The Rocket Davy Crockett went into service in West Germany in 1961, so yet another nuclear weapon that would have been knocking around during the Cuban Missile Crisis, if a little too late for "On Thermonuclear War". They began to be removed from the front lines in 1967, as destroying the Fulda Gap with them was seen as a bit counter-productive.
Despite checking, Your Humble Scribe cannot find any reason why on earth this weapon was named after Ol' Davy. Perhaps because it would have been hunting the Ruffian b'ar?
"Do You Have A Pen And Paper?"
This is one of the lines that Conrad has to quote in his job when dealing with callers. Frequently the call waits until they secure a pen and paper, which can take ages. This is not a problem that Your Humble Scribe is ever going to experience; quite the opposite. Art!
Conrad Is ANGRY!
Yes, again. Get used to it, I don't improve with age. You will obviously feel my pain when I list the envelop-bursting solutions as created by Codeword compilers, the pikers.
"SCHNITZEL": You and I can both guess that this is Teutonic in nature, most likely a breed of carriage dog that ran behind the carriages of the wealthy in Vienna. Let me just consult the Collins Concise. "A thin slice of meat, especially veal".
What? ARE WE ALL NOW EXPERTS IN TEUTONIC CUISINE! Art!
Great. Now I'm hungry.
"BEZIQUE": Aha - an eighteenth century French card game, surely? Hang on - "A card game for two or more players using two packs with no card below a seven". You cannot deny I was on the right track, BUT - using a word like this for an extremely obscure card game with a "Z" and a "Q"? Hardly fair, is it. Art!
Gaze upon it in bafflement
"AGAVE": Hmmm possibly to do with the facets cut into a gem-stone? Or - ballistic missile nosecone design? O go on, let's see. "A plant native to tropical America, with tall flower stalks rising from thick fleshy leaves." BOTANY? WE NEED TO BE BOTANISTS NOW?
Art?
"City In The Sky"
Or 'Township On The Ground', as that's where our trio of time-travellers have hied themselves hence.
The Doctor pointed an index finger
directly upwards, smiling gently. The
townsfolk didn’t take long to realise what this meant, their eyes growing wide
in amazement. Whilst they tried to process
this information, more people began to gather to view the mysterious new
arrivals who appeared from nowhere and who looked so strange – both in their dress and by having such pale
skin.
‘From the Stars?’ asked the younger of the trio, pointing his spanner at
the heavens, to nods from all three travellers.
A chorus of impressed babbling ran around the crowd.
Tooth-Missing looked thunderstruck, unable to speak. The bearded man spoke up, with a tone of
wary cunning in his voice.
‘Aye, Don, remember the mails mentioned those who landed at
Forrest.’ He looked intently at all
three in turn. ‘Decided to come back
again, have you?’
Mister Tooth-missing – Don – shook his head.
‘You can’t just arrive like this.’ He surveyed the crowd, now grown to
at least thirty people. ‘Or hang about
disturbing the peace.’
‘Do you have an office?’ asked Ace, pre-empting the Doctor.
Don nodded, obviously thinking.
He pointed at the spanner-wielding young man.
Possibly not the most hospitable welcome possible.
Books Not Books
Or, 'How To Cheat Your Way To Bestseller Status'. You are doubtless familiar with all those tomes residing in bookcases in W. H. Smith's, with a banner about "BESTSELLER!!" and yes, they do often use double exclamation marks. One way to attain this tagline is to sell 5,000 books, and to have this total confirmed by the 'New York Times', one of the premier South Canadian newspapers. Art!
Understandably, the NYT doesn't publicise how or where they count books, which has led some unscrupulous bafunes to purchase their own books by the thousand to try and get on the best-seller list, which will then promote lots and lots of purchases.
They hope.
One of these pikers, Lani Sarem, sneakily bought up thousands of her own books, which deceit was caught out by other authors. She was kicked off the best-seller list, after lying, complaining and having a publishers pity party. Art!
She used to manage this band, who promptly sacked her after discovering her lying and manipulating. And no, we're not going to put up a picture of her book. Tee hee!
Finally -
The book indexing is nearly done, all I have left to do is add 40 Osprey titles and that'll be that, for a total of about 970 books, which is getting on for a hundred more than the previous list. Hoorah!
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