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!
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
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.
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