NO! That Is Not A Typo
It is, in fact, a rather tangential reference to the blog, which is nothing new and to which you ought to be thoroughly acclimatised by now. There might be a little confusion as Conrad thoroughly loathes and detests that band of zombie cyborgs whom were once relevant 50 years ago, and if Art will put down his calendar of either Mara Corday or Angela Lansbury -
Conrad is imagining a script where the cooling corpse of Mick Jagger is hauled into a hospital for an autopsy, and they point out that he's been room temperature for at least three decades, wh
ANYWAY there is another kind of rolling stone, which, if Art will -
DOG BUNS! ART! <atomic-powered Tazer throbs in the background>
I do beg your pardon, gentle reader. It appears Art has smooched up another crush on Fifties femmes - I will have to investigate and see which piker sent him a "Barely Decent 12 Audrey Hepburn Poses" calendar.
ANYWAY try this aphorism on for size. Art!
More of Stones that end up Rolling.
What that cover page means is "Let's soak the fans so we can rake in the dollars!" - erm - yes. Quite.
Here an aside. Yes, already! What a stupid proverb "A rolling stone gathers no moss" is, when you stop to think about it. Stones do not randomly rollick around, they are inherently static objects. At most you might see a stone rolling for a short minute as it takes part in an avalanche, an event that lasts for mere seconds. Last I heard, acquiring a crop of moss took decades. Art!
This, lest you be unaware, is the hot jalopy of one 'MOFF GIDEON' from "Stor Wors" (sp?), and if you realise the inherent scale, is pretty impressive. It is a 'light cruiser', which Conrad feels is very much a terrestrial term from the era of Perfidious Albion Rampant - that is to say, an oceanic war-fighting vessel able to travel continental distances whilst mounting a decent armament - and thus is able to - O hang on, Mister Hand is loitering, so I think we need to move on. Art!
This replica vessel you may recall from a vlog a couple of days ago. It was shown from the distant exterior only, without anything more than a beauty pass. If you also recall correctly, Conrad was not enthused about such a vanilla voyeurship and - do you see what I d - O you do - vowed to enquire further.
O boy do I have further. Art!
Thanks to Lego Bonkers Constructionist Ben Cossey, who got up close and personal with the brace of blokes who constructed this colossus. What you see - actually, let us take a step back and refer to a Lego warship that was featured on the blog years ago.
Actually let's not. I can't find it after a good 5 minutes poking around. The salient point was that a massive Lego sculpture needed underpinning and modularity in terms of being able to construct and transport. You can see this in the metal and Lego framework above. Art!
You can see why it took the constructionists two days to put their monster together. Their nomenclature happens to be Aaron Monaghan and Martin Harris, whom hail from the belaboured radioactive wastelands of Australia. The blog and details come from Ben Cossey, who's an Ocker specialising in Bionicles yet who made time for this beast. The metal 'skeleton' is essential because an object of this mass will strain Lego-to-Lego bonding to breaking point. Art!
As Ben acutely observed, the canny constructionists wrapped a lot of modules in clingfilm, which served to keep them intact on their journey from Adelaide to Melbourne. That's over 450 miles*. Art!
Again with the clingfilm. Gauging by Ben's comments, this is cheating to puritan die-hard Lego-ists; see above commentary about mass and scale and cohesion. Besides which, this stuff is all concealed beneath the exterior. Art!
Conrad unsure if this is cheating as well. The vertical red strut, you see, is Lego Technic, which used to be a completely different brand from a different manufacturer, until Lego bought them up. Here it forms internal bracing. Art!
This looks to be the easy part - adding the exterior modules once they've been released from clingfilm confinement. Ben, who must have experience of such things, pointed out that, even if a module split into half a dozen pieces, they were all still constrained and contained by the clingfilm, not mixing with more of the 800,000 plus other pieces. And yes, they did have to hire a storage shed to have sufficient space to create it in. Art!
Proof that, as I'd suspected, this build was indeed done to Minifigs scale. I left a comment on Ben's Youtube vlog, and said I couldn't wait for the builders to get working on an Imperial Star Destroyer. Bear in mind this Light Cruiser is 24 feet long and contains 800,000+ pieces, and an ISD would be 180 feet long and contain at least SIX MILLION pieces - you can tell I was joking.
And yes, some people have entirely too much time on their hands.
A Little 'Russian Seasoning'
Allow me to introduce a picture I think the blog has used before, waaaaay back when we were covering "The War Illustrated" when it was covering 1943. Art!
This, gentle reader, is HMS 'Penelope', a Royal Navy light cruiser - no kidding, go look it up if you don't believe me - who earned the nickname HMS 'Pepperpot' thanks to the number of shrapnel holes suffered during bomb attacks, and HMS 'Porcupine' after the holes were temporarily plugged with lengths of timber. This allowed her to get to Gibraltar from Malta, a distance of over 1,100 miles*.
Why is this up again? Art!
This is how leaky piping is being - er - 'repaired' in Ruffia. There is a much darker side to this bodge-job, as explained by a sensible Ruffian on Twitter (yes some still exist). Normally the blue-collar workers who serviced, maintained and repaired this kind of utility would be there, knee-deep in sewage and sparks. However, they are all now sunflower-fodder in Ukraine. The migrant workers from Uzbekistan or Kazakhstan who might have replaced them aren't coming to Ruffia any longer, for fear of being mobilised. Art!
Graffiti reads "100% fixed"
"City In The Sky"
Things are afoot - literally, from the perspective of Arcology One.
When they arrived in the Communications block, the anxious technician in
residence had blown up the image from one screen onto four arranged in a
square. The Australian coastline was
clearly visible, and the hinterland behind it, dotted and shaded with brush and
trees. A thin white line marked the
division between surf and beaches, and out beyond that, perhaps half a
kilometre from shore, a mass of broken breakers showed where a fleet of marine
transport moved away.
‘What are they doing?’ mused Ace.
‘It looks like an exodus.’
‘It seems as if New Eucla is evacuating,’ said Emilia. ‘At a guess, so that our rather massy present
doesn’t kill lots of people.’ She looked
back at Ace, realising the young woman had been right: Pangolin needed to take
flight urgently.
‘They’ll need to move at least a hundred kilometres along the coast,’
commented Schottsky, who had kept up the
rear of the party. ‘And so will the other coastal
townships.’ He cast a calculating eye on
Ace. ‘I hope your Doctor friend is aware
just how much devastation an impact from orbit will have. Personally, I don’t believe that everyone in
the affected coastal zone will have time to get away.’
Hmmmm. One hopes you are wrong, matey.
Hooves For Grooves
One of the most unlikely things ever is quite the Youtube sensation: hoof trimming.
Yes, you read that correctly. There are at least three YT channels that post short clips of cattle or horses getting their hooves trimmed. It is inexplicably satisfying, and very Zen, to see various hooves getting pared back and rendered fit for walking upon again. Art!
Courtesy "The Hoof GP"
Yes, that is an angle grinder. No, it doesn't hurt the cow - that's dead hoof he's grinding away. The other hoof is the real issue. It looks okay at a glance. Art!
It looks fine, said Conrad the hoof expert Ummmmmm nope This should not be there
Our hero cuts the offending article free. It's the end of - O howling irony - a hoof-trimming knife. Someone has deliberately snapped the end off in order to render it better at cutting things other than hooves, and left the broken bit on the ground. Along came Daisy and you can imagine the rest. Art!
As I said, madly popular. Conrad and BOOJUM! can only dream of such figures.
Finally -
The weather has mellowed sufficiently for me to have the window open and thus air out the Sekrit Layr.
* None of that metric nonsense here.
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