Bloomin' Blue Men

Apparently, According To 'Brewer's'

"Blooming" is a euphemism for "Bloody", which will not do here at all.  Forsooth, are we not SFW?  The only time we use the word "Bloody" is when there is blood, and a good deal of it.  Since it is red, and the theme for our title and the Intro is blue, the two cannot possibly meet, else we'd be talking about a Purple People Eater.  Art!

     I know, I know, it's a bit tame.  The alternatives were a collection of 'cute' monsters that were as dangerous as powdered cinnamon.  

     You can be forgiven for thinking that Your Humble Scribe refers to the Big Blue Cheese, Doc Manhattan, from "Watchmen", simply thanks to scale.  Art!

That blue blemish to port and starboard is disintegrated enemy soldiers

     With puny helicopters for scale.

     Hmmmm decent theory but WRONG.  Art!

Blue man.  Red planet.  PURPLE PEOPLE EATER I TELL YOU!

     Conrad thinks they made a pretty good stab at the film, which did it's best with a graphic novel of considerable complexity, not to mention Alan Moore, who is an utter curmudgeon of the worst water.

     ANYWAY nope.  Since there is the plural 'men' in there, you may also be wondering if this is anything to do with The Blue Man Group.  Art!

Distorted because why not

     Conrad has heard of this roundup of rambunctious rascals, yet never seen or heard anything they ever got up to.  More a franchise than a group, they do performance art and have been doing so for the past 30-odd years, across the globe, so they are doing something right.  Art!

World's first toddler-safe xylophone?

     Still nope.  Art!

     O don't be picky.  He's blue and man enough above the belt.  Look, do you know how few blue men there are, bar the ones suffering from anoxia?

     Nope.  Still wrong.  Do you give up?  Of course - obviously! - you do, because you have no idea what I'm talking about*.  Art!

     This little announcement yesteryon got Conrad's fusion-powered pumping unit beating a little faster than usual (thus about 25 b.p.m.).  "Rogue Trooper", you see, is one of "2000AD"'s longest-running and most popular series.  Art!

     Welcome to Nu Earth!  One of the planets used as a battlefield in a galaxy-wide war of the far future.  A merciless barren toxic blasted deadly wasteland - not laying it on too thick, am I? - it's atmosphere saturated with lethal chemical poisons, it's water's liquid death if drunk, this planet-wide battlefield is where the Norts and the Southers are locked in ceaseless conflict.

     One critic aptly described RT as the British and Germans of the First Unpleasantness fighting the American Civil War in space, and they're not far wrong.
     Rogue, or Friday as he gets called, is one of a new breed of soldiers, bred to be big, buff, and bright blue.  Art!

     He and his brethren can breathe any kind of chemical poison and be no more bothered than if it was fresh air.  He is one of the new 'Genetic Infantry', who obviously get called 'G.I.'s'.  Bigger and stronger and faster than normies, they present a considerable threat to the Norts on Nu Earth.

     The artwork in the first two panels above is by Dave Gibbons, who did a sterling job in his own right with big, bold, clean artwork.  Conrad, on the other hand, because he is perverse and contradictorial, preferred the art of Cam Kennedy, who brought a similar level of detail in a different way.  Art!

     That's quite the poignant memorial, commissioned at a time when the Norts and Southers weren't trying to rip each other's throat's out with their teeth.  "We came in peace for all mankind" read the inscription, "And this time let's get it right."  Art!

     More Cam art.  I think this is either an artwork or potential cover picture, you wouldn't be able to devote that level of detail to a single panel in a weekly script.

     ANYWAY this only establishes the basics of the strip, because there was a lot more to it.  We may revisit this, you lucky people.

     O YES - sorry, the film.  All I know is that it's going to be animated, which makes sense as bringing that level of military hardware to the screen - 'twould be difficult.  And cost hundreds of millions.  And whilst Disney can afford to blow a billion dollars, British film studios are a teensy bit more parsimonious.

The Music Of The Beers

Conrad was browsing the aisles in Sainsbo's for the beverages, as it's the only place you can get loose-leaf Darjeeling at a reasonable price, and I usually clear the shelves of all the packets when I descend, like a wolf on the fold

     ANYWAY I also had a nosy at their collection of canned beers, because as you surely know by now, BOOJUM! likes to put up the odd item or two about unusual designs or covers.  Art!

I had never heard of "Tiny Rebel" and the world is no poorer a place for me not having this knowledge - but "Hadouken"?  Aren't they a band that I have heard of, and own one of their albums? (as we used to call them back in the day).  Art!

     It seems Conrad is not up on current events, as they broke up a decade ago.  O well, all things must pass.

     Their name, which seems to risk copyright infringement issues from litigious lawyers, comes from a move in "Street Fighter".  Which I never knew.

Sorry, Couldn't Resist

An odd thing happened in Mordor yesteryon.  There was a huge, country-wide failure of the internet that lasted for hours and hours, which also had a knock-on effect.  You see, the Ruffians have an enormous network of bots and trolls that try to pump out pro-Kremlin guff twenty-four-seven, pretending to be British or South Canadian - usually South Canadian, they can't really get British idiom.  Yesteryon?

It is not beyond the bounds of probability that certain Western agencies with a jumble of letters as identification will have observed this drop in traffic and assessed stats about who, "American Patriot 83250723" really is.  

     ANYWAY another internet idiot popped up on a Tweet that Jake Broe had posted.  II thought Ukraine might be in trouble, because Mordor might target their electricity grid or other significant infrastructure.  You know, like they have been doing and were doing last year.  Art!

    It made me laugh, anyway.   Which is the important bit.

      Nobody has yet come up with an explanation of what caused this outage, and because it's embarrassed the Ruffians they won't admit it ever happened, let alone why it did.  Conrad has a suspicion .....

Where were you when the lights went out, Mister Budanov?

"City In The Sky"

One of the eeeeevil alien intruders is about to discover that the Australian dingo is much, much smarter than a wild dog ought to be.

Mirkan 93 needed to set his computer’s self-defence setting at Level 1 (which the Doctor might have characterised as “paranoid trigger-happiness”) because he didn’t have any protective armour thanks to needing to fit snugly into his Transport.  A startled rat and a dozy toad had already been lasered into charcoaled remnants by the escaping Lithoi, who now found a conflict between the power expended in protecting his ever-so-vulnerable skin and the finite energy in his pocket battery.

     The hunting spiders were known to the Lithoi at their central base, but little-feared.  After all, what good were primitive fangs when pitted against a woven sapphire monomesh suit?  And the Lithoi had fangs of their own, quite capable of rending and tearing if need be, although the most use they got was at the dining suite.

     However, pondered Mirkan 93 as he crawled intently up the drainage channel.  Being safely suited and being exposed to the elements were completely different.  He cringed a little in fear.  Literally exposed to the elements!  That dreadful precipitation of water that struck the coast periodically might erupt at any second 

     A.k.a. "Rain".  Blimey, these aliens could never conquer This Sceptred Isle, could they!

Finally -

Well well I do excel.  This is Thursday's blog completed 08:14 Wednesday morning.  Go Conrad.

*  Neither, frequently, does Conrad <the horrid truth courtesy Mister Hand>

Be Sieged

No!  Nothing To Do With Either Of Those Stephen Buckethead Films

Don't expect that topless Playboy model bursting out of a cake, either, you filthy animals.  Instead, have a picture of a battleship.  Art!

     When you stop to think about it, the title makes no sense, as there is no siege in play; the bad guys enter the ship in disguise and then take over, the end.  You might be better advised calling it "Guerilla Warfare Aboard A Battleship" except that would be hard to fit on a poster and cinema hoardings.

     ANYWAY I shall begin by putting up a picture of "Siege", the board game from the Eighties that I recently unboxed and began playing.  Yes, solo.  The great thing about playing solo is that it's impossible to cheat - or, if you do cheat, your opponent instantly knows about it.  Art!

     The Notes inform us that this castle is modelled on a Welsh border castle of the thirteenth century, which was used purely as a military garrison as it was too small to accommodate any local aristocracy and their retinue.  The Rules gradually introduce more kit; I'm now using scaling ladders and the next game will have siege towers, then there are ballista and mines to come.  Great fun!

     Well, it would be if I wasn't so preoccupied in annotating "British Armour In The Normandy Campaign", by John Buckley.  PROFESSOR John Buckley to you.  And reading "Official History of Australia in the War 1914 - 1918 Volume VII", which is 800 pages long and two inches thick.  Plus digging out any mentions of the Light Car Patrols in "Military Operations Egypt And Palestine".  A bookworm nerd's notes are never done.  Art!

Guessing it's a replica as the real thing would be over 100 years old

     ANYWAY back to sieges.  Up to the age of gunpowder, the besiegers would generally attempt to get at the fortifications and physically overthrow them, with devices like those quoted above.  Back in the days of Hellenic antiquity, it was a convention that, were fifty yards of a defensive curtain wall to be undermined, then the defences were doomed, the siege would be over and all concerned could sit down and negotiate a surrender.  Philip of Macedon, a wily bird, once bluffed a besieged polis by merely heaping up overburden to the length of fifty yards; end result = surrendered polis.  Art!

     Any assault on a fortified position full of defenders was always going to be a bloody business, which is why the other option, starving them out, was Plan B.  In this, the attacker surrounded the position, be it a simple fort or a whole city, thus cutting them off from any external supplies.  Whilst there might well be springs or other sources of water inside a city, you can bet there wasn't infinite food.

     You might consider a contemporary situation, where the attackers haven't managed the encirclement.  Art!

     Leaving the 'back door' open means that supplies, which includes rations in addition to ammunition, reinforcements and replacements can be brought in, and the wounded and civilians can be brought out.  Who knew!

     No, this Intro is not going to be about Ukraine.  Rather, we're looking at a far more obscure contemporary conflict that has been increasing in size and scale for a couple of years now: the civil war in Myanmar.  Art!

     Whilst the junta installed by coup has - or had - as it might be called, 'all the gear, no idea', their morale, especially of late, has collapsed.  This has led to large-scale surrenders of government troops, some of whom promptly join the rebels.  The rebels also acquire all that nice hardware, which mean they now have tanks and artillery.  Overall, the junta has lost control of about one-third of Myanmar, and if that Neanderthal Art will get off his over-padded posterior -

     This isn't good.  Still less good was the surrender of almost 3,000 government troops at Llaukkai on the Myanmar-Sino border, after being besieged.  There, a reason for today's title!  No, they couldn't be re-supplied by air; the rebels now have enough MANPADS of sufficient quality to shoot down Myanmar air force aircraft, especially helicopters.

     There's also another reason to mention ancient siege warfare and Llaukkai.  You see, six brigadier-generals were captured there by the rebels, and the junta has resorted to the traditional punishment meted out to commanders who surrendered their citadel too easily or early: the death sentence.

     Good luck imposing it, Junta, as said generals are now far beyond your reach.  So long and besieging you!

Ummmm Nope

Conrad occasionally features items about rock-climbing and mountains, because it's such a sublimely dangerous and un-necessary sport.  I mean, would the world be any better or worse off if nobody climbed another mountain ever again?  Exactly so.  Art!

          The credits say that this appallingly high, steep, sheer rock formation with the verrrry narrow ledge is called the "Thank God Ledge", so-named because the first party to tackle El Capitan, of which it is part, managed to camp and rest before tackling the rest of the 'Half-dome', which is not merely high and steep, it overhangs.  Conrad has a sense of vertigo just looking at the Dog Buns! thing.  Nopenopenopenopenope.

More MegoLego

I just made that name up, and if it becomes accepted into use, I want royalties from Collins.  For Lo! we are back on exorbitantly large Lego constructs, proof that Conrad isn't the only one with entirely too much time on his hands.  Art!

     Largest Lego skeleton, before you ask.  This beast is 20 feet long, although it only stands on two, and is made of 80,000 pieces.  Ol' Spitty didn't show any 'making of' so Conrad is having to guess that it's based on a metal skeleton, which is kind of ironic if you pause to think about it, and that tail looks as if it might be an anchor point for an interior cable.

"City In The Sky"

When last we looked at New Eucla, it was about to encounter a pack of Hunting Spiders, one of this author's more unpleasant post-apocalyptic creations.

Lately, however, prey had failed to come into their hunting grounds in sufficient number and sheer hunger was driving the spider packs into larger sweeps over greater areas of ground.  Lacking any intelligence, they didn’t realise that most of this absence was due to the wandering herds of camel and kangaroo learning to keep away from a certain ill-defined zone (those herd members too stupid to learn ended up as high-grade ashy fertiliser on the Nullarbor Plain).  Ironically these scouts were themselves being scouted, and the unseen scouts were far deadlier than any scavenging arachnids.  They proved this by witnessing the Lithoi’s slow escape and creating a plan.

     One of the causes of that animal migration, Mirkan 93, currently laboured slowly and carefully alongside the rutted camber of the track out of the township, where it’s long, narrow body could fit without any difficulty.  An observer able to look down from the vantage height of a horse would have witnessed what seemed to be a snake of unusual girth for it’s length, a snake with glittering metallic collars and braces and belts, a dark leathery snake with odd little limbs sprouting at three points along it’s belly.  That same observer would have been dead in seconds thanks to the lasing rods that protruded from the free-floating weapons collar mounted on the “snake”.  

     Hmmm a clash of snakes and spiders, two animal species that score high on most people's Cringe Meter.  Bring it on!

Phew, Disaster Narrowly Averted

As you should surely know, tea is a subject close to Conrad's heart and stomach, and he recently travelled into the Sainsbo's in Babylon Lite to get more more more loose-leaf Darjeeling.  Thus I am rather chuffed at seeing a bye-line as below.  Art!

     Also, I know someone who's going to suffer when the Remote Nuclear Detonator gets back from it's 150,000th Victim Service.  Art!

     There are times when Conrad wishes that the American Revolution succeeded.

Finally -

Yes yes yes, it's bitingly cold outside thanks to the windchill.  Good!  A vast improvement from the monochrome palette at dawn, where everything was either grey, black, wet or all three.

A Concatenation Of Misapprobation

 Or, If You Like -

THE STUPID! IT BURNS! Art?

     <sigh> I'm going to have to explain that title, aren't I?   Okay, okay, to 'concatenate' is to link together, especially into a chain arrangement, which is what we here at BOOJUM! do in the Intro.  'Misapprobation' means disliking, and if this word didn't exist previously, it most certainly does now.  Dance, English language, dance for Conrad!

     ANYWAY I thought I'd begin by showing how the concept of 'compact' works in real life, as related to Your Humble Scribe.  Art!

     That there is a Gliclazide tablet, massing all of 80 grams or a fraction of an ounce, with a ruler for scale.  Yet by sheer magic it is able to prevent a twenty-five stone middle-aged man from collapsing in a diabetic coma over his keyboard, for which you may all be truly grateful.  Art!

    This compact little spanker is a 'Wiesel', intended as mobile armoured firepower for the Bundeswehr airborne forces.  Note how small it is with the puny human for scale, as it was intended to be heliborne or air-dropped.  You can laugh, but if you're plain leg infantry that cannon will chew you up in the open.

     And then we come to the meat of the matter.  Art!

     This is such an amazing concentration of stupid in a small space that I couldn't let it lie.  Entirely absent whether Guns 'R' Good or Wicked Weapons, this Tweet ought to be re-titled a Twit.

     Let us accept their assertion about how many gun owners there are.

     "We are the largest de-facto army on earth"

     This instantly annoyed Conrad as they failed to capitalise "Earth".  They then claim that these 72 million are part of an army.

     O Rly?  Art!

     That, matey, is an army, or a small part of one.  All young, fit, trained and equipped to deliver serious harm to the oppoes.  Note the heavy metal at rear.  Art!

     These are some overweight, middle-aged cosplayers.  Do you see the difference?  Take your time.  End Pokeness also assumes that all these gun owners are a politically-homogenous group who all march to the same drum as he does, which is more than ludicrous.  His 'army' has no command structure, communications network, logistics, armour or air support.  Art!

     This is South Canada.  In case you'd forgotten, it's fnorping ENORMOUS.  Let us assume that those 72 million armed persons are uniformly spread across the continent.  How are the gun owners from Alaska or Hawaii going to get to the Texan border in order to stymie the Eeeevil Gubmint?  Those trying to get from Alaska to mainland CONUS are going to hit trouble at the Canadian border, as the British Americans take a very dim view of people trying to bring guns into their fair country.  Good luck trying to fly from Honolulu International with a carry-on full of pistols and ammunition.

     "They'll have to come through all 72 million of us".  O Rly?  Conrad sincerely doubts your 'army' could organise 720 people.  What, are the Deep State Federal Assassins going to head out from Washington, then move through Alaska, then California, then South Dakota, then Montana, then Oregon, then -

     I think you get my point.  There would, quite probably, be certain indicators that one-fifth of the entire US population was mobilising and heading to the Texas border, so those pesky Feds with their FBI and NSA and Homeland Security would very likely understand that there was a threat to the state and mobilise accordingly.  Art!

     That's a Warthog on a strafing run.  These things destroy main battle tanks; a column of 4x4s would get turned into iron filings, and those inside would die from being filled with holes the size of dustpan lids.  Shooting at it would make things worse, as muzzle flash would give away firing positions, and End Pokeness might come to realise that an AR-15 is not an effective air-defence weapon.

     Another reason he might not get the crowds - sorry, 'armed forces' - he expects is that the courts are still sentencing January 6th rioters, who are getting stiff sentences of many years.  Pear-shaped fantasists have been significantly missing from the streets since then.

     Conrad suspects Stupid is it's own punishment.  Brevity may be the soul of wit, yet it can also be abused by a Twit.

Mega-Block Mania

Number 6 in SpitBrix collection of his 20 Greatest Lego Builds of all time, up to that date, because you can bet someone will be trying to claim the Tallest Lego Building title any month now.  Art!

     No, not just a car made out of Lego - a life-size car made out of Lego.  This thing consumed 500,000 bricks and took the builder - Ryan Mcnaught - eight weeks to assemble.  Art!

With severed human arm for scale

     Ol' Spit also claims that the thing weighs four thousand pounds, or two tons, which, frankly, Conrad cannot credit, because that would make it heavier than the real thing, and Lego blocks are not denser than steel alloys.

Mega Block-Mania

Sorry, couldn't resist.  What happens in Mega City One when rivalries between city blocks spill over into violence?  Why, you get Block Mania, where their Citi-Def units - a militia present in each block - wage war on each other.  Art!

     As I recall this one, the sinister sneaky Sovs were behind this particular rumble, causing mayhem via pollution of block's water supply with an aggression-inducing chemical.

"City In The Sky"

Battle is about to be joined in New Eucla.  Shotguns against death-rays.  Place your bets.

     The co-ordinates had been sent and received, when another crisis landed squarely upon them: a radio message was being sent from New Eucla to one of the satellite communities in orbit!

     Panic amongst the Lithoi alone would have taken thirty or forty seconds to shut off the broadcast; instead their computers predicted the best course of action and initiated a powerful jamming signal instantly.  This also had the unfortunate side-effect of cutting off communication with Mirkan 93.

     At this point there were no anxious feelings amongst the lizard-folk.  Their flying-eyes were not designed to be crewed with live Lithoi but did have an emergency crawl-space built in over the landing gear, and Mirkan 93 would be occupying that space.  Once aboard, the flying eye would proceed to New Eucla and destroy the whole township with everyone in it.  As insurance, a second flying eye would go along, too.

     That was the plan.  A third party had their own plans, plans nobody else had even considered.

 

     A scouting group of hunting spiders, five in number, came scuttling over the baked earth, heading southwards to the sea like a set of severed hairy hands.  This would have taken them into the territory of New Eucla and under normal circumstances the voracious creatures would have kept clear

Whilst We're On The Subject Of Dreddy

One of the stories in the "Starlord" annual for 1980 concerns "Time Quake", and if we can prod Art into semi-sentience with this thermal detonator*, then -

     The series was set in the Fortieth Century and pre-historic times, definitely out of the remit of Dredd and Mega City one.  Yet what do we see in the reveal frame towards the end of the strip?  Art!  O stop whining it wasn't even primed

     Looks rather like a Mega City Judge to me.

     Of course, I could be overthinking this .....

Finally -

What a disgusting day it's been!  The kind of dirty dark dank dismal drizzly one where the lights have to stay on even at noon.  I think I need to go look at a few Youtube vlogs that gloat about Pimpkinhead and how much money he stands to lose by next week.  $370 million, potentially.  Tee hee!

     O and just to confirm the tracking algorithm on Blogger has gone flatteringly bonkers.  Art!

     If you believe that I have an Eiffel Tower  to sell you.

*  Don't worry, it's not primed.

History Repeating Itself

 A Little Bit

I think that was a song lyric, which is code for "I can't be bothered to look it up and make sure".  To what am I referring? O I thought you'd never ask!  You see, I was reminded of our sad contemporary times when watching "Foyle's War" because it brought up the subject of the Sudetenland.  This name is probably unknown to 99% of my audience, so of course - obviously! - Conrad has to lay out a little exposition.  Art!

     Yes yes yes, this is relevant.  It's a nine-part Youtube epic about Original Poster, and how her close family, not-so-close family and relatives so distant they might as well live on Mars all came to be aware that she (and Hubby) had money, and lots of it.

     No, she didn't win the lottery.  She and Hubs, via hard work, sacrifices and investing wisely, came to have lots of $$$.  Knowing that money always sends people off the deep end, she had kept this quiet, until 'Blabbermouth', her sister in law, began stoking up other relatives because OP hadn't paid $35,000 for a holiday for SIL.  This led to a prolonged bout of her relatives wanting money, lots of it, because they were family, and they deserved it, and how dare she not share her wealth with everyone else?

     This is called Being Generous With Other People's Money.  Art!

"Look - no rabbit!"

     This represents one of the most shameful episodes in the political history of This Sceptred Isle.  Here you see Neville Chamberlain selling Czechoslovakia down the river, in the hopes of preventing war with Nazi Germany.  Well, he got his war, wanted or not, and it destroyed him politically, which is small solace for the Czechs.  Art!

     The Teuton dictator Adolf Hitler, you see, declared that the eeeeevil wicked disreputable Czechs were carrying out pogroms against the German-speaking population in the Sudetenland, and that merciful and benevolent Germany needed - not wanted, needed - to come to their aid.  Thus Ol' Nev was quite happy to grant them occupation rights to the Sudetenland, because that meant no war, and everyone went home happy, right?

     Well, no.  For one thing, as your beady eyes have no doubt discerned, the Sudetenland was Czechoslovakia's border with Germany, and it was heavily defended.  Teuton generals, having a look at these fortifications post-occupation, heaved a sigh of relief at not having had to attack them, as it would have been a bloody business indeed.  Art!

     Ol' Nev must have felt a right prat when the Teutons occupied the whole of Czechoslovakia in 1939.  Not only did Herr Schickelgruber lay hold of the entire country without it costing him dearly, he also laid hands upon the Czech military industrial sector, which helped to underpin the Wehrmacht.  For Your Information, one-quarter of the tanks that the Teutons invaded France with in 1940 were Czech models, the T-38 of which was the equal of any Teuton tank and better than most of them.  Art!

       It was such a sound design that the chassis was kept in production until 1945.  Yes, Nev, the Law Of Unintended Consequences has very sharp teeth, hasn't it?

      It wasn't all negative.  The Czechs at their Brno arsenal co-designed with the British Enfield arsenal one of the best light machine guns of all time, the BrEn. Art!

     Hmmmmm who could possibly have been claiming that he needs to 'rescue' the people of a foreign country that speak his own language?  And which other nations are Being Generous With Other People's Money Territory?

     As Santayana said, those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.  Our normally venal government here in the UK seems to be aware that Ol' Nev and Munich cast a long shadow.

     

Guess Where?

Here's another example of disintegrating infrastructure, where the ground around a burst pipe has been excavated in order to facilitate - ah - 'repairs'.  Art!

     Once buried under a few tons of soil, this bodge-up will indeed hold.  Until the breach continues to expand, or the wooden caulks rot away, or another crack occurs and widens.  Gosh, it's almost as if funding for infrastructure is being siphoned off for another purpose!  Art?

    This is a Dutch motorway underpass being put into position over a single weekend.  And it will still be standing a century from now.  I am minded about a Soviet-era joke, where an earthquake hit one of the Central Asian republics.  All the shoddy Soviet buildings collapsed; the Tsarist-era ones survived.

"City In The Sky"

We hasten back to New Eucla, where battle is being planned for and expected.

Several hundred miles away to the north, buried deep beneath the Nullarbor Plain, a team of Lithoi were planning their next, highly drastic move in light of their existence being revealed.

     Hours before, emergency warning lights and sirens had sounded, indicating that an undercover Transport amongst the humans had been compromised and would need emergency back-up. 

     In fact it had been more complicated than that: Mirkan 93 sent a radio message stating that he needed to abandon his Transport in order to implicate a human investigating the destruction of Forrest hamlet.  This human had single-handedly sniffed out their existence and was threatening to breach their institutional secrecy.

     Regardless of whether he succeeded in eliminating this human interloper, Mirkan 93 needed collection from a safe point well beyond the township, away from possible eyesight, eavesdropping or interception.  A random spot miles into the desert was chosen, partly out of spite on the part of his seniors, who were not impressed that he had destroyed his cover, his Transport and their secrecy.

     The co-ordinates had been sent and received, when another crisis landed squarely upon them: a radio message was being sent from New Eucla to one of the satellite communities in orbit!

     When it goes pear-shaped, it's a whole orchard, isn't it?

Bring On The Bricks!

Or, the next in SpitBrix list of the 20 Greatest Lego Builds Of All time.  Art!

     This is the largest cruise ship made out of Lego.  It was designed and supervised by a Lego-certified professional builder - there's only about a dozen across the globe - and contains over two million bricks.  It took the team and a thousand volunteers two months to create, being 28' long and 5' high.  Art!

     One wonders if it has internal details, like O I don't know, a playroom, where Lego Minifigs can make things out of Lego?

Well Hello Maunsell Forts Again!

Conrad was idly scrolling through the feeds and came across this, which you ought to recognise.  Art!

     Typical DE hyperbole, they're not 'deep in the ocean' as they are placed firmly in the Thames estuary, which is nowhere near any ocean, being close to the North Sea.  I mean, come on editor and sub-editor, Conrad is doing your job for you!  Their placement was to plug a gap in the anti-aircraft defences of This Sceptred Isle during the early years of the Second Unpleasantness, so that any Teuton bomber thinking it could travel up the Thames estuary to bomb London would have an unpleasant and lethal surprise.

     You can see how decrepit these structures are, having been abandoned for decades and decades, eroded away by wind, weather and the briny ocean waves.    "Doctor Who" filmed part of a serial here in the late Sixties, and The Mystery Jets shot a music video here a few years ago, but they are inherently Extremely Unsafe.  Do not trespass, as becoming dead is not good for you.  Art!

In their heyday, a-bristle with guns and radar

Finally -

Better go box up the Sunday Stew.  I've added a large dose of barley after finding a packet at the back of a cupboard, behind a big tin of sesame seeds.  Hopefully it's been stewing long enough for them to now be cooked, instead of being treacherous miniature bullets.  I guess I'll find out tomorrow.