No! Nothing To Do With The Post-Punk Ska Band
Who had fourteen minutes of fame back in the Eighties, and - surprise! - who don't get a picture here, as they are now very obscure and forgotten by all but a select handful as aged as Conrad, who i
ANYWAY let me begin with a far more compelling picture, from the documentary "Escape From L.A." and don't worry, we'll get to the nuclear weapons soon enough. Art!
PAY ATTENTION!
"Nobody draws until this hits the ground" He cheated!
You see that first picture? That's a standoff. Which my Collins Concise defines as:" The act or an instance of standing off or apart, a deadlock or stalemate, to keep or cause to keep at a distance."
If you, as a person, are standoffish, then you are aloof or remote in manner, which is where the bad manners come in (although Conrad would have imagined it would be the depth of bad manners?), unless you're Finnish, in which case it's perfectly normal*.
You are probably wondering what all this has to do with nukes, aren't you? Of course you are! and if you aren't WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE? Art!
Ladies, gentlemen and those unsure, allow me to introduce the GAM63 'Rascal', a South Canadian nuclear missile of the early Fifties. "Rascal" is defined as "A disreputable person or villain" and, indeed, residents of the Sinister Union would have agreed vehemently with this description were they to encounter a GAM63 in real life. The missile came out of a specification for an air-to-surface missile with the stated aim of: "Destroying well-defended targets that were en route to strategic targets", from a distance of 100 miles.
This, you see, is a 'Stand off' weapon, to be used by South Canadian bombers against Sinister fighter bases, SAM sites, radar units, and anything else in the way of getting to a big juicy strategic target. Art!
A few reasons. For one, it was extremely large and thus required an expensively-adapted bomber to carry it, singly, without the ability to carry any other weaponry. Secondly, the test launches, all 51 of them, had a very high failure rate. Thirdly, the terminal phase involving a radar link was easily spoofed or jammed. Strategic Air Command wanted the whole project dropped - ha! do you see wh O you do - and were able to get it scrapped shortly before it went live in late 1958. Art!
That there B-47 needed $1 million in additional equipment to carry and launch the Rascal, which is why SAC were happy to see the back of it. I dare say the Sinisters were equally as happy to see an inaccurate flying mallet being sent back to Stores.
There are, currently, still Atomic Rascals available for you, the general public, to purchase, except these cause injury only to a single person at a time. Art!
From ska to ski. I think that's enough rascallry for one Intro.
Motley! Now you've got those skis on, we're going to paint over your snow-goggles and let you run free.
Conrad Is ANGRY!
Yes, again. "How can this be!" I hear you gasp, and, pausing only to wonder if there is the merest smidgeon of sarcasm in there, I shall explicate. Art!
Excuse me? What the Dog Buns! is this - they have "Pigs On The Wing" but not "Pigs"? No "One Of These Days"? Nothing from "Obscured By Clouds"? Or, indeed anything pre-1970?
BAH!
Only We Can Prevent Veeblefetzers**!
In case you weren't around in the Fifties, which you won't have been unless you recognised the Rascal, you won't be aware of "Mad" and their single-word all-purpose McGuffin, the 'Veeblefetzer'. Art!
CAUTION! Hazardous to voles
Now you are forearmed and forewarned by BOOJUM! and need never fear being confronted by a wild Veeblefetzer.
"City In The Sky"
The Doctor is taking a little un-escorted stroll around New Eucla, seeing what he can see, and also attracting a small crowd of children from a nursery.
His exporatory stroll seemed to be entirely uneventful, rather to his
disappointment, so he followed a track off what passed for the main street in
New Eucla, passing one of the big glass buildings Mike had said were used to
corral sheep before shearing. The doors
were swung wide open, allowing air to circulate in what must be a sweltering
box when full of sheep.
Even though he expected trouble the savage impact on his spine came as a
surprise, causing him to stumble inside the glass shed and fall onto the soft
dark earth that smelt of sheep droppings, his umbrella falling alongside
him. A rustling thump, followed by a
grating sound and a solid clack, were
revealed to be a small sack thrown into the shed just inside the doors, which
had been slammed shut. That last noise
had been a solid beam being dropped into place across the doors, holding them
shut.
‘Ow,’ winced the Timelord, rubbing his bruised vertebrae. The bruise would, without a doubt, match the
end of that wooden beam.
Very well, the suspect had stuck him inside a glass shed. Clearly there was more to this plan –
‘Ah,’ he murmured. ‘I see.’
From the sack crawled an enormous spider, it’s body easily bigger than his hand. It scuttled out into the shed, followed by another dozen that rapidly scouted around before focussing on him. Forming a wavy line across the building’s width, they cut him off from the door as he slowly backed away.
Arachnaphobes look away now. Art!
Eucla as is
The Final Cut
No! Nothing to do with Pink Floyd, get out of here with your monomania. No, this is the last act of The Battle Of Harper's Ferry, as skirmish-gamed by Richard. This was the second test run he'd done to work out any problems before taking the game to a convention or two. Art!
This is the last stand of John Brown and his accomplices, in the Engine House, where there were both hostages and a lack of light. The US Army stormed the building using only bayonets, for fear of accidentally hitting the citizens of HF that were being kept prisoner. They first had to bash a hole in the door with a ladder used as a battering-ram. Art!
After the whole incident was over, Richard asked us to turn over the Character Cards to see the fate of our men. Not a good outcome for JB & Co. I'm afraid - all were executed by hanging in 1859.
What balanced that outcome was Conrad's continual adding points to the 'Insurrection Count' whenever his card came up, instead of carrying out any actions on the board. We were not told what the Count would do, nor if there was a critical total, except there was - Richard revealed that the count was high enough for the South to be on the brink of mass slave revolt (or so they thought!) and as good a result as was possible. Art!
You see, JB used the trial and courthouse as an oratorical platform to get his views on abolishing slavery across; he knew he was a dead man walking and didn't care if it meant he got to preach to the nation.
Finally -
Hmmm, interesting! I am at that point in "Official History Of The War - Military Operations - Egypt & Palestine Volume I" where the Arab Revolt has just taken place in the Hejaz, which is what we now call Saudi Arabia. Guess who's just put in an appearance? Captain T. E. Lawrence.
"Egypt & Palestine" is rather a misnomer: so far we've also had Libya, Sudan, now the Hejaz, Oman, Yemen and Syria. Art!
El Aurens in local garb
* We could compose a whole Intro solely on the subject of Finns being habitually and culturally misanthropic.
** This device is from the pages of Quora, not "The Daily Beast" for once.
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