Arms

Yes, That's Ambiguous

But so are we.  Now, given our recent analysis of "The Aeneid" you may recall the opening line by Virgil: "I sing of arms and of the man", which is a poet's way of poetically saying he's going to write of arms and the man.  Poets.  Got to keep a sharp eye on them.  Art!

     There's our chap, using one arm to carry his father, and holding onto his son with the other.  Mrs. Aeneas, as was the habit in those days, follows up behind because political correctness or feminine equality was not generally observed in antiquity.

     Well, no, I have to dash your hopes.  The kind of 'arms' I'm talking about here are metaphorical weapons, as evinced by Maccy in his speech where he dares the world to bring it on: "To take arms against a sea of troubles."

     Sorry: MacBeth.  Got a bit too informal there.  Conrad also apologises about referring to this play again, it's just that it got dinned into my head for 'O' Level English, which in turn led to a life-long loathing of the Bark Of Avon.  Art!

Sea?  Armed.

     What does any of this have to do with Donald Judas Trump?

     Quite a lot, actually, and I'm so glad you asked!

     You see, Donold is not having a good time and hasn't for the past few weeks, thanks to his various legal and campaigning woes (note I was careful not to use the "P" word there).  Art!

     This was his high point, which is passing strange when you consider his ear got scratched by flying glass caused by an assassin.  People have completely forgotten it, as has his ear.

     From there it seemed all he had to do was continue to slander, defame and libel Somnolent Joe, and he'd cruise to the White House to begin his dictatorship, as he publicly promised.

     Wellllllll not quite.  In fact not at all.  Biden stepped down and in his place Kamala Harris stepped up.  She has now been joined by Tim Walz, whom 99.999% of the planet had never heard of, but whom seems to embody the persona of Everyone's Favourite Uncle.  Art!

     This is where the 'sea of troubles' begins.  See the image above?  Donold  claimed that it was 'fake', all done with AI and there were no people present.

     It's a still from a video clip that shows the people were definitely there.  

     More briny problems: charts and polls are now showing that the Harris/Walz combination is trouncing the Trump/Vance combination, which instantly led to Pumpkinhead declaring them 'fake', too.  Art!

     This, on the other hand, is indisputably fake.  DJ Tango got out of service during the Vietnam Unpleasantness by having a tame doctor diagnose 'bone spurs'.  

    That's not all he's got to look forward to.  In September Judge Merchan is going to pronounce sentence on Pimpkinhead for those 34 felony charges he was found guilty of, and is unlikely to be merciful thanks to Donnie's incessant targeting of the judge, his staff and his family.  A wiser defendant would appear contrite or remorseful, words Donold would have to have his staff look up in a dictionary for him (being functionally illiterate, allegedly).  Art!

Merchy, pondering how he got the short straw

     Next up is his January 6th election interference case, which is back in court this Friday, where Judge Chutkan - another black woman in a position of power Donold! - is going to begin assessing which, if any, of his actions had official immunity.  Art!

     Unlike the sentencing one, this could run and run.  Donold is not required to attend and probably won't, given that he's trying to run a campaign into the ground.

     Then there's another defamation trial in September, right in the middle of campaigning, which Agent Orange brought against a reporter who mentioned Donold and 'rape' a lot in an interview.  I think.  It's very difficult to find details as all you get on Google are the E. Jean Carroll cases.  Just what he wants to come to public attention!  Then there are still the Georgia fake electors trial upcoming, and the New York case brought by Letitia Wright - yea truly a sea of troubles.  Art?

     A Potential Way Out:  That above is Ernest Saunders, one of the guilty parties in the so-called 'Guiness Four' trial.  His sentence was significantly reduced because doctors and psychiatrists deemed he might be suffering from pre-senile dementia.  They didn't actually diagnose it, which was their get out, because Ol' Ernie miraculously recovered from his irrecoverable pre-senile dementia and made a living giving business lectures.  Art!

" - and here's my impression of a turkey."

     So, the Farting Felon might be able to get out of his trials by pleading mental incompetence, thanks to the examples quoted above.  In which case that's his Prez campaign at an abrupt end.  Or, he carries on campaigning and gets sent to prison.  What an unpleasant dilemma! well for him, not for those of us with a bowl of popcorn to hand.

Conrad The Hair-Splitter Rides Again

I don't know about you but some errors just leap off the page at me.  Leap, I tell you!  Art?

     Well, I hate to break it to you but that's NOT a dragon.

     It is, if you care to know, a 'Wyvern'.  Traditionally - because they don't really exist in the real world - they are comparatively small, lizard-like, winged and have only two forelegs, not the normal four legs of a dragon.  Art!

     For reasons obscure to everyone, the English county of Wessex has been associated with wyverns for the past couple of centuries, and above you see an heraldic version of same.

     Another thing wyverns lack is the ability to breathe fire; the example at top looks so barking-mad aggressive I don't think that's a significant negative.

"3 Body Problem"

Your Humble Scribe finished binge-watching this last night and it ended on rather a downer, only mitigated by the news that a second season is due.  I did pick out a few interesting names in the credits.  Brad Pitt, for one, as a Producer, and also Rosamund Pyke, who is considerably less famous than Brad.  Art!

Rosie, looking haughty

     Conrad, being a nerd with sharp eyes and sharper attention, noticed that one of the minor parts, a variety of detective, was reading - Art!

     Well well well, what's this then?  I imagine the director gave the actor carte blanche to choose a book to read, and he chose -

     Don't think it has anything to do with the plot, just a side-note of note.

     Then there's the method proposed by Jin Chung, the New Zealand physicist, as originally proposed by Stan Ulam in 1947, of using nuclear detonations as a method of propulsion in space.  To anyone with a long memory, this will sound familiar, as it became the basis for 'Project Orion'.  Art!

     Due to time and space constraints, Jin's model uses a 5 km² sail to absorb the nuclear detonations from pre-positioned nukes.  Nice to see them referrence Ol' Stan.
     Plus there's a telling exchange between Detective Shi, played by Benjamin Wong, and Saul.

SAUL: Know your enemy.  Didn't Sun Tzu say that?

SHI:  I dunno, I'm from Manchester

     Twist in the tale: Ben is from Manchester.

"The War Illustrated Edition 192 October 1944"

Yes we are onto another edition.  Don't complain or I'll go back to Volume #1 (this is Volume #8) and start from there.  Which I might do anyway.  Art!

     This cover's a bit dull.  It shows a group of Canuckistanian soldiers at the Menin Gate in Ypres, the town in Belgium recently liberated from the Teutons.  Once the Teutons had fled, the Belgian Fire Brigade began to sound the Last Post at evening, as they had done every evening before the Teuton occupation.  Art!

     Our old friends the Maunsell sea forts in the Thames estuary.  There were seven of them, six armed with 3.7"anti-aircraft guns and a central control tower.  They were still hale enough in 1967 to be used to film 'Doctor Who' but are very, very rickety now and I don't think people are allowed to land on them.  Not bad for a structure over 80 years old, hmmmm?

Finally -

I have been reserving rancour and rage over 'Codewords' of late, so you'll be getting the Frothing Nitric Ire to do with them shortly.  O so shortly!