What's Up, Prof Doc?

We Have A Theme For This Intro!

What do the Space Shuttle and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle have in common?

     CHALLENGER!

     You can't deny it.  Well, you can if you're delusional.

     ACD, you see, invented another character who is less well-known than his consulting detective, yet who has gone on to cast a long shadow in the world of entertainment.  Art!

     Conrad is unsure if this film can be broadcast ever again, given the level of animal cruelty brazenly on display, as they used real reptiles with bits glued on to stand in for dinosaurs.  At one point a duelling pair of dinos fall over the edge of the Lost World's plateau, and - I'm not convinced they didn't just simply push said beasties over the edge.  Art!

You could get away with this in 1960

       There have been umpteen other film and television adaptations, which I won't go into or the Intro will consist of nothing but, so allow me to try and pinpoint our hero - Professor Doctor George Edward Challenger, which is how come we get today's title.  Art!

     The Prof Doc is quite the temperamental opposite of Ol' Sherly, being aggressive, vain and hot-tempered and not suffering fools at all.  Glad we're not acquaintances!

     The Space Shuttle 'Challenger' brought back unpleasant memories.  This, you will recall, was the one that disintegrated after launch, killing all the crew as this kind of accident typically does.  There is a famous image which we'll get to, after one with the shuttle in rather better nick.  Art!

     One of the investigative panel brought in to study and discover the reason for the explosion was Richard Feynman, a South Canadian scientist we have mentioned in the past and who could fill a whole series of blogs himself.  He demonstrated with a C-clamp what had caused a cascade of failures that led to this -

     Moving right along, there is also that interesting hydrographic feature over in the Pacific Ocean, known as the 'Challenger Deep', which is what you'd call a bit of an understatement when you know the details.   Art!

     Pretttty far down, I think you'll acknowledge.  It is, in fact, the deepest part of the oceans across the whole globe, being the bottomest part of the Mariana Trench, itself quite deep as these things go.  Art!

     Why is it called the "Challenger Deep"?  The second part is, I hope, obvious.  The "Challenger" bit has nothing to do with the peppery Prof Doc, and everything to do with HIS BRITTANIC MAJESTY'S ROYAL NAVY thank you very much.  You see, it was a Senior Service vessel called "Challenger II" that made the record-breaking discovery of how deep the Deep was.  Art!

     To date 27 people have been to the bottom of the Challenger Deep, which is more than have walked on the Moon, thanks to the Deep being on our doorstep as 'twere, yet not that many given that there are 9 billion of you us swarming the planet's surface.

     There is,  as you may be aware, an AFV called "Challenger" as mentioned on the blog occasionally, an interim design created in 1944.  Art!

With puny humans for scale

     This beast mounted a 17 pounder gun in a large, boxy turret, and was intended to see off the heavy Teuton tanks, which it was quite able to do, the 17 pdr being a real brammer.  Trouble was, they'd elongated the hull to be able to accommodate the turret, but didn't increase the width accordingly, which made it unwieldly and difficult to handle.  Prof. John Buckley, who is considerably more charming that Prof. Doc Challenger, is convinced the Challenger turret was taken from the TOG-2 one and he may have a point there.  Only 200 were made as the Sherman Firefly, which also mounted the 17 pdr, was a better all-round tank that could be waterproofed for wading or crossing river obstacles.  Art!

Boxy but quite foxy

The Lukewarm Equations

For most of February, my Traffic stats have been wildly, atmospherically high, which is flattering and entirely inaccurate, as this has happened before.  Today, it being the 29th of February since we are in a Leap Year, the traffic counter on Blogger seems to have a Hard Sense Reset.  Art!

     Whether this will last as we step boldly into March remains to be seen!  I'll let you know.

Meanwhile, In Schadenfreude-land

I am told that Letitia James, the New York Attorney General, passes by a building called '40 Wall Street' daily.  She has her eye upon it because it belongs to DJ Trump, whom has only 25 days to post either a bond or the entire $454 million judgement against him.  She posts daily about how much he owes with the added interest, so she must be using the website "Donald Trump's Debt Live Tracker" as am I.  Art!

     The 'billionaire''s lawyers were trying to get the court to accept only $100 million, because it seems Fatty Failure doesn't actually have the $400 million he boasted about in a legal deposition last year.  O what a surprise, DJ Tango lied!   I am shocked, I tell you, shocked! but not much. 

"City In The Sky"

Things are coming to a head.  A giant crocodilian head, that is.

     The giant antediluvian creature moved slowly into the heart of New Eucla, dragging it’s limbs and a wrack of seaweed along for the ride, sounding a muted bellow.

     The Lithoi, not used to free water in any significant amounts and hence not very aware of marine fauna and certainly not aware of megafauna, panicked when the Dilly showed up on their flying eye’s scanner.  A blast of superheated steam and a sonic boom came as they abruptly fired at the huge crocodile, which leaped backwards as it’s scales crisped and burnt.

     The Doctor dragged Billy backwards, knowing what would probably come next and wanting to get away from the havoc.

     They were only just in time; with a screeching hiss the blinded Dilly launched itself at the source of it’s torment and clamped it’s mighty jaws around the flying eye, being roasted from the inside as it did, collapsing in a torrent of sparks and shattered plastic.  The tail lashed once, twice, shattering buildings on either side of the road and then all that could be heard was the pattering of rain.

         Mike, Billy and the Doctor were the survivors, and Mike looked seriously scalded.  He stared in amazement and disbelief at the corpse of the Dilly and the smashed Lithoi craft.

     ‘Did – you didn’t plan that, did you?’ he asked.

     ‘No.  Happy coincidence.’

     Billy looked at the smashed, waterlogged, burnt or windowless buildings all around and shook his head.

     ‘Now what,’ he muttered.

     ‘Hopefully our uninvited guests will get the message, pack up and go home,’ beamed the Doctor.

     Ah, what a card!  Eternal optimist, he is.

A Little Musical Critique

We've not had one of these for months and months, much to the relief of the entire musical community, as literalism and pedantic hair-splitting are two of their least favouritest things in all the world.

     Your Humble Scribe was wondering last week exactly what "Cicatrix" was, and if you could eat it, or whether it was a mythical creature composed of the body of a cockerel with the head of a cockerel, and the tail of a cockerel.  Just not put together in sequence.

     Well, no.  Not at all.  A "Cicatrix" is the scar left when a wound heals and I blame The Mars Volta for their song "Cicatrix ESP".

Do you recall it's name?

No, I do not!  It's  not my job to be your PA, matey

As its suggested beck and call

This sounds less like a PA and more like an indentured servant

This face and heel

Cicatrix being all about scars, shouldn't that be 'heal'?

Will drag your halo through the mud

Metaphor or cleaning opportunity?

Ash of Pompeii

Pink Floyd beat you to it, as of fifty years ago.  Soz.

Erupting in a statues dust

VANDALS!  DOG BUNS VANDALS!

Shrouded in veils

Ah, to conceal all the cicatrixes.  Cicatrixii?

Because these handcuffs hurt too much

Serves you right for being a destructive criminal 

     Only bonkers mathcore prog metal can save us now!

Finally -

Last day of sober February as I'm typing this up on Thursday 29th, looking forward to a snifter of gin tomorrow after work!

If I Were To Say "Supermac"

You Might Tut And Shake Your Head

"Conrad, usually so diligent and attentive where spelling is concerned, has either lost it to an excess of gin, or is having an attack of the purple wim-wams."

     Don't underestimate Purple Wim-Wams, they're what saw off Judge Crater and Jimmy Hoffa both, b

     ANYWAY that's not relevant, I've been sober Lo! these nearly four weeks now, and I got inoculated against Rainbow Wim-Wams alongside my COVID booster.

     You, on the other hand, have jumped to an erroneous conclusion.  Look! look there, I can't be that rotund râsucirea, as they say in Bucharest, not if I use long words like "Erroneous".  You thought I'd mis-spelled 'Superman', didn't you?  Art!

World's biggest Boy Scout

     No, I definitely meant "Supermac".  To you a superhero is some kind of weird sandwich - thank you, Oddball, because that quote's not out of place here.  Art!

It has a Hibernian scent to it

     Quite by chance Your Humble Scribe discovered that there is a chain of Irish fast food restaurants that go by the name "Supermac's", which is close enough.  That picture above is from 2019, when they were planning to expand into London, a plan that might have been brought low by COVID*.

     Then, if you were a patrician snob with millions to burn - which makes me wonder why you'd be reading BOOJUM! - you may own a yacht, and partake in the "Super Mac" 500 mile yacht race over in South Canada.  Art!

     WRONG AGAIN!

     I am referring to a British politician <booh hisssss!> and Prime Minister Maurice Harold Macmillan, who served as PM from 1957 and whom was lampooned in a cartoon, where the mocking appellation "Supermac" was applied to him.  Art!

     It was meant to be satirical, which rather backfired, as it became hugely famous and an instant media theme overnight.

     None of which is what we need bother ourselves with here, as Your Humble Scribe is going to go waaaaay back in time, to the dawn of the First Unpleasantness in 1914.  Art!

     This callow youth is indeed Maurice Harold Macmillan, old Etonian, sprig of the British establishment and a man of his generation which meant he immediately joined up when the First Unpleasantness broke out: it was widely seen as being The Right Thing To Do.

     After a short stint in the King's Royal Rifle Corps - despite the name merely a regimental-sized unit - he joined the considerably more swanky Grenadier Guards, one of the British military elites, when the Guards Division was being mustered in 1915.  The Teutons grew to fear and respect the Guards Division, in part because it was composed of young men like Mac.  Art!

Kitted-out for conflict

     Conrad has the Official History of the Grenadier Guards sitting on his shelves, so I picked out Mac and noted where he earned a mention.  First time is during the Battle Of Loos, a name you might laugh at yet which was an extremely unpleasant affair that introduced the army of Perfidious Albion to Continental-sized warfare.  Art!

The 'empty battlefield' which Mac commented upon himself

     "4th Battalion September 1915, 27th September 1915: " - the greater part of No. 4 Company under 2nd Lt. Layton and 2nd Lt. Macmillan"

     " - Captain Morrison gave his men orders to crawl back and dig themselves in on the Hulluch-Loos Road.  During this movement 2nd Lt. Macmillan was wounded in the head."

     This wound kept him out of the front lines for months, until he returned in mid-1916 as a fully-fledged Lieutenant.  Then, he goes out on patrol in July into No Man's Land and - is wounded in the hand.  18th July 1916.  This seems to have been outside his usual regiment as the Guards Division wasn't present on the Somme until later in the year.

     Then the Grenadier Guards turn up on the Somme, and Mac is involved in a 2nd Battalion attack on 15th September.

     " -Lt. Macmillan was lightly wounded in the knee, but was able to go on."

     For which read: "He copped a Blightly one but continued."

     " - and Lt. Macmillan, who had gone on in spite of the wound in his knee, was struck a second time in the thigh."

     He was in fact hit in the thigh and pelvis, and lay in a shell-hole unable to move during daylight.  To pass the time, he nonchalantly read an edition of "Prometheus" by the playwright Aeschylus, which he just so happened to have in his pocket, in the original Greek of course - obviously!  Art!

The unlovely environs of the Somme

     This fourth set of wounds were serious enough to keep him out of the rest of the First Unpleasantness as a recovering invalid, and left him with a permanent limp in later life.  Which was great for him in his political career, as such stigma were very much seen as a badge of honour.

     There you go - Supermac.  Art!

     I wonder if he could swear in Greek?

How Very Horrid!

But hilarious.  As you cannot fail to know by now, DJ Trump is on the hook for $454 million dollars, a judgement imposed as of Friday 23rd February.  He is also liable for interest on this sum, at 9% per annum, which is Latin for "Boy he's getting his bottom bitten".

     A very malicious person has set up an automated tracker, which is titled - Art!

     I can only catch a screenshot of the tracker because - you may be ahead of me here - it continually scrolls onwards and upwards, totalling all those dollars.  As of 09:38 28/02/2024 it stands at - Art!

     By this time tomorrow it will have increased by $111,000.

     O and some of his fans started up a GoFundMe, which surprisingly hasn't been closed down.  Their problem is that the million dollars they have raised so far doesn't even cover the interest charges to date, and it would take them two years at current donation rates to hit that big big total.  And totals donated have rather fallen off a cliff in this week.

     In other news concerning Bloaty Biffer Bafune Boy, his legal team have filed a 'Notice To Appeal', which in legal terms means they are saying they're going to say.  Since they have not bothered to post a bond with the court, that interest is going to keep on accumulating, and they have but until 25th of March to either pay the whole amount or post a bond.

     Bring on the wheelie-bins of popcorn!  Art!

"City In The Sky"

That third party I mentioned has now arrived and is very definitely visible.

When the Doctor slid out from cover, dislodging glass and wood chips from his back with a deft wriggle, he stood as witness to a sight few others had seen and lived.  Not fifty yards from him loomed a monster, a creature clad in dark green scales that loomed as big as the buildings around it, and as long as the street before and behind it. 

     ‘A Dilly!’ breathed Billy.  ‘Giant crocodile!’ he added, un-necessarily.

     This additional description was gilding the lily.  The Doctor stared at a mutation created over generations thanks to the input of radiation from the Great Northern War, not too much to kill off the original strain, not too little to fail to affect the genotype.  No, this porridge was just right.  A thirty metre monster weighing in at twenty tonnes, able to destroy a house with a sweep of it’s tail, teeth as long as sabres, and a disposition akin to that of a bear with a migraine.  A week-long migraine at that.  He realised that the monster must have been lurking in the ocean depths off the littoral of the Gulf of Carpentaria when his “flyswatter” hit, and been driven ashore by the turbulent seas.  New Eucla constituted the nearest land with the easiest access beyond the shoreline.

     Porridge!  Yes, somebody's going to get most severely stirred.

Come In Bill Tidy All Is Forgiven

Where is the picture I have in my mind's eye?  I suppose a different one will have to do.  Art!

      What I remember from seeing this strip in the newspapers of the day was that one of the Fosdykes was a pilot of a 'scout' airplane as they called them then, in the First Unpleasantness, who did nothing but shoot down scads of Teuton pilots in wildly unrealistic numbers.  Five in a single frame, 

     The reason I raise this is because this seems to be what the Ukrainians are now doing down Black Sea way, for only yesteryon they shot down another two Su-34s, which is another $100 million up the spout, or down the tubes, for a total of 11 aircraft in 10 days.  These totals are DJ Tango indictment-worthy numbers - about $1,200 million so far.  Art!

     

     Nobody knows for certain what's doing this aerial execution.  Conrad has his suspicions (see above) .....

Meanwhile, In Mordor -

War is peace, ignorance is bliss and maths is a forbiddingly difficult subject to master in Ruffia, it seems.  Art!

     Ah yes, about that -

     The Ukrainian Air Force only had 250 planes at it's largest.  No doubt some of those kills are X-Wing fighters, Star Furies and lots and lots of F-16s.

Finally -

I'd just like to leave you with a parting shot of Donald Buck's looming total, again, both because I can and it's fun imagining the sweaty orange baboon worrying about it.  Art!

     <sound of a moustache being tweaked>

  Pippity pip pip pip!

*  There is a LOT behind this story.  We may come back to it.

Ett Jubileum För åldrarna!

You May Be Wondering What On Earth Is Going On

First the blog discovers Romanian as a suitably freaky caption language for BOOJUM! and then abruptly switches to what appears to be verbiage from Scandinavia.

     Well, duh.  Let me translate for you: "An anniversary for the ages".  I can swing this as military history, rather than Politics or Current Affairs.  What am I referring to?  Art!

     Sweden, you see, has dropped generations of neutrality and formally joined NATO.

     Here an aside.  Yes, already!  NATO, not NAFO.  The former is the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, the latter is the North Atlantic Fella Organisation.  NATO prevents Mordor from crossing it's borders, whilst NAFO pokes merciless fun at the orcs.  The Ruffian state lacks any collective sense of humour so it finds both organisations equally reprehensible.  Crimea river, Putinpot.  He was probably counting on the Orbanazi (Hungary's proto-dictator) to halt Sweden's accession, except that repellent were-toad has been served notice by the rest of Europe and turned into a milksop.  Art!

This was the most satirical map I could find.  It's not wrong, mind, because the Baltic is indeed now a NATO lake with the only non-NATO shoreline that of Ruffia's tiny exclave of Konigsberg - another five years in the gulag for not using the Ruffian name!  

     During the Cold War years the Swedes had a large conscript army, which they mostly got rid of when Sinister Union 1.0 went away.  Despite being a neutral country, their armed forces had only the best kit that money could buy, and a major defence industry in Bofors, whose products graced both camps in the Second Unpleasantness.  Art!

Bofors 40 mm anti-aircraft gun
(Since they're Australian they probably stole it)

     One of their most iconic Cold War - or "Kalla Kriget" in Swedish - vehicles was, of course - obviously! - the "S"-tank, which famously had no turret.  No! not like Ruffian tanks - the S-tank was designed that way.  To Conrad that makes it more akin to a tank-destroyer or assault-gun, but what do I know.  Art!

Behold the Stridvagn 103, with puny human driver for scale.  You can see how low the profile is, and yes, they could aim the gun by manoeuvring the whole tank because of excellent Swedish engineering skills.  Why they would name it after one of the most lethal stretches of water in This Sceptred Isle is completely obvious.  Art!

     Both are dangerous and have hidden depths.

     ANYWAY I wanted to point out the Swedes have given up the idea of having a whacking big conscript army and are going for a much smaller professional one, rather like the French and Dutch.  The orcs of Mordor might turn their noses up at an army only 50,000 strong and you might be wondering at this yourself, except to get to Sweden the Ruffians have to get through Finland first, which requires defeating an army of one million verrrrry angry Finns.  That's the Swede's neighbours for you: truculent, fond of vodka and forever giving Ruffia the greasy eyeball.  Art!

     One area the Swedes did not neglect after the Cold War ended was aircraft design.  This is the Swedish 'Gripen', a steal at $85 million per unit, and an aircraft Ukraine is casting desirous eyes over.  It's a lot cheaper than an F-22 or f-35 and costs about 5% as them to be maintained over the years, and smarter people than I (there are some) have opined that it would be an excellent aircraft for the Ukes to acquire.
      Then there are the Swedish submarines.  Art!

     That's a Gotland class in the lower picture.  These puppies are quite small, unlike the ballistic missile bruisers that Perfidious Albion or South Canada have in service, which means they are perfectly suited for the shallow waters of the Baltic.  What is more, or what is less, according to your standpoint, is that they are practically silent when operating.  In a major fleet exercise with the South Canadian Navy, these sneaky-peeky submersible hid underneath their Red Force opponents undetected.  Then sank them.  Only pretend! which will not be the case were the Ruffian Baltic Fleet ever to mount a hostile sortie.

     What was that drivel about Putinpot being a 4D chess master?  That bafune couldn't even manage a game of draughts against a five-year old.

Talking Of Water

And a means to travel through it, I thought I'd bring up another abandoned island, this one being within the environs of South Canada.  Art!

     This is Fort Carroll, a naval fort in the middle of the Patapsco River in Maryland, which was constructed to keep the seaways protected as of 1847.  It did such a good job that it was obsolete by 1921 and the South Canadian Army abandoned it.  You may have heard of the designer: Robert E. Lee.

     It was bought out by a private individual in 1958, with big plans for it, none of which ever materialised, and it remains as seen above, derelict and slowly eroding away.  Art!

To See Ourselves As Others See Us

Conrad came across an interesting map on Twitter -  none of that "X" nonsense here - that had been promoted with the incorrect assertion that it was written for Poles in the British armed forces during the Second Unpleasantness.  Art!

     It is, so the debunker stated, a map from the Cold War, to enable Poles to  pronounce our palimpsestic placenames with confidence.  Don't you just love how they mangle the proper spellings?  "HEISTYNZ" is so obviously "Hastings" I shouldn't really need to point it out.  Less clear is "TANBRYDZ-LELZ" which I'm guessing is "Tunbridge Wells"?  We can all agree that "ISTBON" is the ancient and noble burgh of "Eastborne".  I will leave you to disport yourself for at least two or three minutes wrestling with Polish and placenames.

"City In The Sky"

We appear to be down to only two survivors in the battle between the denizens of New Eucla and the Lithoi's lethal hunting drones.

     ‘We’re fighting a rather one-sided battle.  I’m afraid I possibly miscalculated,’ stated Doctor Smith.  ‘Also, a third party seems to have intervened.  If I didn’t know better I’d say the dingoes were here driving bulldozers – Ace?  Can you hear me?  Hello?’

      Billy would have shaken his head if the constricted space and miscellaneous sharp edges hadn’t made any such gesture risky.  Doctor Smith might be right about alien invaders, but there was no denying he was mad as a box of frogs!

      To the Doctor, mystery thunder without any accompanying lightning meant one thing:  explosive force administered to Planet Earth.  Initially he’d been inclined to dismiss it as another Lithoi plot, but after the flying eye kept right on destroying property he’d become less sure.  Why carry out two types of attack when only one was needed?

     For one thing, the thunder had a suspiciously regular rhythm.  BOOM boom boom BOOM, repeated with pauses.    His flippant remark about dingoes with bulldozers had only been partly a joke, since anything able to impact the ground and create such a resonance would be immense, easily several tons at the very least.

     ‘Doctor Smith,’ whispered Billy.  ‘Doctor – Doctor!  Come and see!’

     From his hiding place inside the giant pile of rubbish, Billy saw a massive grey-green pillar of flesh descend onto the marshy roadway of New Eucla, stamp it’s stubby taloned toes into the ground and move onward.  He had a strange suspicion about what was making the noise and the movement.

Where is Mick Dundee when you need him?

JUSTICE PREVAILS!

Small earthquake in Chile kinda style, nothing earth-shattering.  Welcome nonetheless.

     You may remember last year that the Crooked House pub was burnt down in an arson attack, and the owners demolished it two days later.  Blatantly crooked behaviour, either to get the insurance money or clear the land for selling it or putting up a sportswear warehouse.  Art!

    Before, when it was intact.  This will be the pub within the next three years as South Staffordshire council have ordered the owners to rebuild it to it's previous condition.  This is schadenfreude served with lemon and a sprinkling of sugar, as the crims will doubtless be out of pocket and will try to wriggle out of this, loudly whining about how unfair it all is.  Suck it and see.  Perhaps they'll be forced to rebuild it at another location in South Staffordshire - Four Ashes?

Finally -

What unbelievably disgustrous weather!  February seems determined to go out in a sulky pout.  Well, it can be as grey and wet as it wants, that doesn't stop tomorrow from being PAYDAY!  No, wallet, don't look so sad.  I've already bought all the books I intended.

     Although -

Making Mayhem Material

Hello Monday Morning!

For that is when I am typing this.  In the past our schedules have been either 08:00 - 16:00 or 09:00 - 17:00, with an hideous Monday variation of 08:00 - 17:00 once every five weeks or so.

     Now, the schedules have been moved forward 15 minutes to accommodate 15 minutes of 'Buzz', whatever that might be.

     Just to fill you in on the fascinating lifestyle of a contemporary WFH employee.

     ANYWAY I did caution you yesteryon that there would be mention made of explosives, and then some.  Art!

     No, Art, no.  You're over-egging the pudding.  Those chaps from "Ordnance Lab" acquired a super-high speed camera that could take pictures at 2,000 frames per second, and as you might expect from a Youtube channel that positively delights in Blowing Shizzle Up, they were determined to picture various things exploding.  Art!

     This is their humble beginning, 8 oz. of black powder resting on a wooden stand in order that not too much dirt is kicked up to block the shot.  There were three different cameras shooting this, including the Chronos fancy-dancy-schmancy super high speed one.  Here's their basic model Go-Pro shot, done at 120 frames per second.  Art!

     From this you understand why they film remotely.  Next up was the Chronos, shooting at 2,000 frames per second.  Art!

     A fraction of a second after detonation.  Impressive! and also done from behind a protective screen as that camera was expensive.  For their next pyrotechnical production, the Lab lads used a hand-grenade, the South Canadian version of a Pattern 36 Mills bomb.  Art!

     Again off the ground to avoid a big debris cloud when it goes off.  Note that the SAFETY FIRST lads used an electrical cap to detonate the grenade, rather than muck around with pins and levers which would have limited their escape time to mere seconds.  Art!

     That 'dust' thrown up on the ground is in fact shrapnel from the grenade kicking it up, an indication that the Lab lads were very sensible keeping away from this explosive device.  Art!

     There's the difference between the Go-Pro and the Chronos.  Notice that all the Go-Pro captured was smoke when the grenade went off.  Here's another frame, now six into the explosion sequence for the grenade.  Art!

     Okay, they'd tried the pineapple, what about a potato-masher grenade?  This is the Teuton Steilgranate, as used in both First and Second Unpleasantnesses.  It had a lot less metal in it's body as the primary use was as an assault weapon and you didn't want it flinging jagged-edged death fragments at your own people.  Art!

     To operate this weapon, you unscrewed that cap on the base and pulled an igniter cord, which mechanism allowed the Lab lads to trigger it with a long piece of string.  Art!

     There goes the handle at lower starboard.  It flew so hard and fast that this is the last it was seen.  Conrad was impressed at how much damage this grenade caused.

     Their piece de resistance was a pressure-cooker bomb loaded with six and a half pounds of ammonal, which is a portmanteau word that crosses "Ammonium" and "Aluminium", and comes out with a dangerously explosive baby.  I may go into a rather ghoulish, ghastly and gory Biggles short story that features ammonal as used in dirty tricks.  We shall see.  Art!

     Jake explained that it was no use complaining to the Houston branch of the FBI, nor the nearest Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms office, as both are well aware of the Ordnance Labs lads existence.  He did recommend calling the Royal Canadian Mounted Police if you were concerned, which is a bit petty, eh?  Art!

     All that remained of the pressure-cooker were a few small fragments scattered over a circle one hundred metres across.  Saves on washing up, I suppose.
     Conrad shouldn't have to say this, because high explosives are not the sort of things to go mucking about with after a night in the pub, and neither are low explosives:  DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!  Or anywhere else.

Hark Hark This Shark Does Bark!

Saturday marked an unpleasant anniversary: the original invasion of Ukraine under the Special Idiotic Operation, which was marked by large crowds across Europe and across The Pond in South Canada and British America.  The Kremlin Gremlin is probably feeling a bit sick about this, as he'd expect everyone to have gotten bored and moved on to the next big thing.  

     Except not.  Art!

     Conrad is unsure exactly why sharks - but is willing to go with it.  You can also see the "NAFO" banner, a sight guaranteed to send the Krembots, fanbois and vatniks into a frothing rage as they insist NAFO is a CIA Psy-Ops covert organisation working out of Langley (confusing the CIA with it's deadly rival, the FBI) that is plotting to corner the market and obtain unlimited rice pudding.

     Note the police officer wondering which superior officer he ticked off to get protective guard duty outside the Ruffian embassy on 24th February.  Art!

     His mate is wondering exactly that, too.

     You can tell it's the Ruffian embassy by the two-faced eagle plaque on the wall at rear.  As for "Rave on Putin's grave" (nice to see they got the apostrophe correct), you'll have to take a ticket and join the queue, love.

Conrad The Cruel

I have the moustache for it, don't you think?  This concerns a Youtube channel and the Comments appended to, which, if we cattle-prod Art into semi-sentience -

            Neal Katyal                                                Jan Psaki                             Andrew Weissman

     I was able to type those names up without having to take even a second to think about them, that's how many South Canadian newsclips I've seen on Youtube.  This vlog was in the aftermath of Judge Engeron handing down that swingeing fine on Bloaty Biffer Bafune Boy, which triggered some MAGA loonwaffles hanging out in the Comments.

@scottyjordan9023

7 days ago (edited)

Don’t forget to let him what a good job he’s has done by next weekend when the store shelves are empty.

     Scotty was so furiously angry that he missed out the word "know".  He was referring to a proposed MAGA trucker boycott of New York, because they were all upset and teary-eyed.

     O who's this in the Comments replying to Scott!

@PsilocybinCocktail

2 days ago

 @scottyjordan9023  Hi, Scotty! How empty are the shelves tonight? I can't see any news of same on any media anywhere, so I thought I'd touch base. Oh - did you know that trucker Chicago Ray who posted a video about this abruptly changed his mind, took it down and put a retraction? How strange is that.

@PsilocybinCocktail

1 day ago

 @scottyjordan9023  Shelves empty yet, Scotty?

     That profile looks kind of familiar .....
     No reply from Scotty to date.  Probably sulking.

"City In The Sky"

The Battle Of New Eucla continues.

     ‘Why is that?  There’s vibrations there that shouldn’t be,’ he muttered, thinking aloud and  not worried about any eavesdropping.  Grains of sand shifted in the puddle.  Physics, practical day-to-day stuff that he dealt with thanks to his dad’s insistence, told him that there had to be an input of energy from such symptoms.

     ‘Doctor - ’ he began, before realising that Doctor Smith had produced a strange metal cylinder and was talking into it.  Billy jumped in surprise and wonder when the strange cylinder began to talk back, and belatedly recognised a radio transmission device – but one a fraction the size of the ones he’d seen as a child in the Heritage laminates.

     This conversation suffered interruption when the Lithoi’s flying eye came hunting them, possibly drawn by the electronic signalling.  Doctor Smith harried them from their insecure hiding place to another formed by the collapse of two residences into the street, creating a fractal pyramid of debris that they both burrowed into.  He then relayed a description of the unearthly creature that had masqueraded inside a fake human being, hiding beneath a plastic exterior.

     Once again thunder minus lightning interrupted them, rattling their entire hideout.  The sound  of the Lithoi’s flying eye destroying another house came clearly to them as evidence of how close the alien device was to them.

     Not sure where Mike disappeared to.  Tut tut, author: continuity!

Finally -

I may relent and open the door to the Sekrit Layr, as Edna The Entitled is whimpering and scratching at it, lest there be food fallen on the floor that she wants needs.  La reverdere!