I Thought I'd Put An Exclamation Mark In There For Emphasis
Because, rest assured, you have NO idea what I'm talking about, right? There may be a few Latin-literate scholars out there, the fearsome perverts, who might recognise the first part, "Batracho-", because it's means "Frog" in Latin <hack spit> and we'll not go into how Conrad knows this fact.
Given that most readers cannot know what I'm going to be talking about in the next sentence, let alone the next paragraph, perhaps a little explanation is in order. Art!
FYI, Conrad is up to Page 330, so only another 1,000 pages to go! Yes, we will be coming back to this.
Here an aside. Don't quibble, the Remote Nuclear Detonator needs a test run. In common with the rest of April to date, today has been miserably wet and woeful, meaning Edna The Entitled and I have been stuck indoors. Just now I glanced out of the window and see that the downpour has dried up, the floodwaters are receding and Edna is hanging around hopefully <sighs tragically> so we may need to go for Walkies. Not a bad thing as it gives Your Humble Scribe a good twenty minutes of Thinking Time, with the proviso that I've got to remember any pearls of wit, wisdom and wonder. Nor will I tempt fate by saying aloud "It's far too horrid for anyone else to be walking their dog" as this ALWAYS backfires.
<twenty-five minutes later>
Art!
This is the translation - "The Battle Of The Frogs And The Mice", which is a fable not actually by Homer, rather by Pigres of Caria. It's a mock-epic about an inconsequential conflict between frogs and mice, and the serendipitous finding of the above is that the Fred Gwynne so mentioned is indeed that Fred Gwynne, better known as Herman Munster. Art!
Where were we?
O yes. No, the author is not George R. R. Martin, sorry.
The expression 'Batrachomyomachia' is used as of non-news, which has various other iterations, amongst them the South Canadian "Storm In A Teacup" or Conrad's further refinement, "Tempest In A Thimble" and if the latter turns up in "Brewer's Dictionary Of Phrase And Fable" then I want royalties.
Yes yes yes, there is also the Barf Of Avon's "Much Ado About Nothing", which I have not read, nor do I intend to. Art!
A stellar cast, which still won't sway me
"But what about Stephen's magnum opus?" I hear you quibble, and, pausing only to chide you for excessive use of Latin, I shall explicate.
As we already know by now, Conrad is a hair-splitting pedant of the very worst/best/typical <delete where applicable> variety, so when he came across the following passage in TS, he jibbed somewhat.
" - one of them with a recoilless rifle that fired seventy gas-tipped slugs per second -"
It's possible that Ol' Steve is making shizzle up here out of whole cloth, and/or he wasn't familiar with what a recoilless rifle actually is and does, or he thought it sounded cool and would imply that this was a weapon of the near-future not currently in existence. Art!
 |
| M67 |
Conrad is unaware of any weapon that fires bullets with a 'gas' tip and suspects any such would contravene the Geneva Convention, because it's perfectly okay to perforate a person with normal bullets, just not ones sporting a cyanide or arsenic tip. 'Seventy rounds a second' is also an extremely high rate of fire, meaning a normal 30-round magazine would last less than half a second, or - was it belt fed? Art!
Is this where misconception comes into play? The M67 had a horrid anti-personnel round that detonated and propelled victimwards several hundred flechettes when the trigger was pulled, but it did this only once per round. Also, firing a real recoilless rifle in an enclosed space such as a radio studio (where the above shooting occurs) will blow out your eardrums and give you concussion*.
Conrad: there for you with every frog-mouse battle.
Excuse Me?
The hair-splitting pedant rides again again, especially after seeing this sidebar item on the feed. Art!
What's wrong with this picture?
Those are heiroglyphs, of the Egyptian language, not Greek.
In fact it's a bit more nuanced than that: the city is Thonis-Heracleion, which was situated in the Nile delta, not in Greece proper, and it combined both Egyptian and Grecian culture, but putting "Graeco-Egyptian city" might confuse people, one supposes.
"Crisis Point"
Yes, more pictures from deepest darkest Dungworth and the encounter battle between the forces of the Sinister Union and free Czechoslovakia. Art!
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| Darkest deepest Dungworth |
These are the two other games Richard organised, where the Sinisters are attempting an opposed river crossing en route to Stary Boleslav. I shall let Richard describe these scenarios: "This game sees two Soviet command teams racing to be the first to reach the Czechoslovak city of Stary Boleslav. For the winner there’s the prospect of being awarded the Order of Suvorov (Second Class), while for the loser there’s the very real possibility of being appointed to command the security detachment of a chemical weapons research facility. In Kazakhstan!"
These games were slow to start as Richard had to educate the teams in how to play the "Tac War" rules. Meanwhile back between Zlic and Zblov - Art!
A top, Dex's armoured battalions are making very slow progress, thanks to having low-quality Soviet COs. In the middle Andy is moving a column of T-10s slooooowly forward; they are very robust and pack a big punch, but O my! are they sluggish. And at the southern end of the table we see the Sinister's second wave of infantry on the move, as the first one has, by this point, been practically wiped out. That's okay, they have lots. Notice that I've tried to disperse them to avoid getting scragged by artillery fire.
"City In The Sky"
The Doctor, being the manipulative little imp that he is, has put Ace on the spot.
Ace bit the bullet. It stood
right in front of her, after all.
‘I could go Downstairs. I’m okay
with a sphere or the land as it lies.
I’m immune to bugs and diseases.
Plus, I know all about blowing things up.’
He stood in front of her, beaming, clapping her on the biceps with
obvious pride.
‘Ace! Dorothy! I’m so proud!’ He toned down the emotion. ‘Ah, that is, I thoroughly approve of your
entirely voluntary decision.’
She cocked an eyebrow at his hamming, before laughing herself. Then, catching sight of the big North End
Airlock being opened to allow a batch of girders inside, she whistled as the
sheer mass of retrieved tonnage became apparent. One question at the back of her mind was
answered: you couldn’t build a shuttle from components big enough to outfit an
ocean-going liner. The Doctor’s
attention was focussed instead on a gaggle of Wardens that drew closer until he
could make out an unfamiliar boilersuited figure they were escorting.
Not a boilersuit, military fatigues.
Interesting! Who could this be –
oh, I see. We get M3 and a babysitter
comes attached with it, too.
‘This is Captain Kirwin,’ announced one of the Wardens. ‘From
Keep an eye on Kirwin, they come into their own later on.
More Of Money Misery
Chinese and Indian banks and financial institutions are now getting extremely wary of doing business with Ruffians, thanks to the threat of secondary sanctions being imposed by South Canada. They are triple-proofing any trading being done, which 1) Slows down a process that used to take days into weeks or even months, and 2) Ramps up admin costs, which you'd better believe are being passed on to the Ruffians. Art!
Peter The Average will probably start getting antsy about this exchange rate and lean on the Russian Central Bank to intervene, propping up the ruble with monies from the National Wealth Fund. Which is both finite and running low. Art!
Here's the ruble as it stood a year ago. So it's slid by ₽11.54 since then, despite all the fiddling with taxes and swindling business funds held in dollars. Perhaps another 'Special One-Off One-Time-Only Never To Be Repeated Windfall Tax' is going to be levied?
Finally -
Just to post a couple of Comments from the BBC's 'Have Your Say' about a game between Not Pretend Madrid and The City Of Manchester (?), which was closed at 1,532 Comments entered. Don't forget, the Beeb doesn't allow swearing.
Art!
Lynda Bellingham. Must have switched careers.
* None of which has any bearing on the story, to be honest.
Bellingham totally out of his depth as he is for England in big games.
The hype is from the lovein from the media.
If Bellingham doesn't score - on goal line - what does he do. His 2nd halves are well known for him to just fade out of game. So he has to moan to prove..