Not To Say Randomly Veering Ones
If Conrad's thoughts were a car, he'd definitely get pulled over by The Dibble for wilfully erratic steering, being all over the place. I've been sitting and pondering for a good hour about how to create a hook to hang this Intro on, and it came to me in a flash. Art!
Meet Xenophon and his tenacious ten thousand, Greek mercenaries who were trapped in the middle of hostile territory, smack dab in central Persia, after their leader, a pretender to the Persian throne, had been killed. An Ooops moment. The Persians called the Greek's officers to a meeting under a truce, and then very un-sportingly killed the lot of 'em. Ol' Xeny had to lead his troops on an epic march to escape pursuit and death, all the way to what we now call the Black Sea. Art!
Their fortunes only turned when they came into view of the sea, which they greeted with "Thalassa! Thalassa!" which is Greek for "The sea! The sea!"
We now jump forward in time and take a look at "Mr Friend"'s Youtube channel, where we encounter a crashed plane, a pilot adrift in a yellow rubber dinghy and - well, it couldn't be a giant hand, could it?
Because this is Thalassaphobia in action, of course the dinghy sinks, into the briny depths, which might or might not be the habitat of a giant hand. Art!
'Depths' is the operative word
Right, have we got the concept of 'depth' at the forefront of our minds?
Good, because we are jumping back in time and space to the Italian Front of October 1917, which was discussed yesteryon through the lens of "The Great War In Europe". SIT BACK DOWN!
Thank you. Conrad, behaving as if he knew what he was talking about, informed you yesteryon that the terrain along the upper reaches of the Isonzo River (known to the Austro-Hungarians as the Soca) was not suitable for any kind of prospective breakthrough. Art!
You can see why. Lots and lots of mountains and valleys. Nor is that all. We here at BOOJUM! have explained to you many a time that trench lines in mountains need to be excavated with explosives or pneumatic drills and take a Dog Buns! long time to create.
By late 1917 the endless Italian offensives along the length of, and across the Isonzo, had succeeded in gradually pushing the Austrians out of their last defensive line. One more push would have broken them. The Teutons, having a sudden surplus of divisions thanks to the collapse of Romania and Ruffia, hastily came to the Austrian's succour. They provided seven Teuton divisions, better-armed, better-led and better-trained than the Austrians, adept at using infiltration tactics that were an unheard of novelty to their compatriots and the Romans. Art!
Staged. Though it does give a flavour.
Their Pioneer Regiments also brought along a weapon copied from the British Livens Projector, which the Teuton stubble-hopping infantry hated and feared in equal amounts. The Livens Projector was a simple large-bore mortar, buried at an angle in the ground and fired en masse electrically, in the hundreds. They normally fired canisters of gas, of several pounds payload, and would saturate and render gasmasks useless. Perfidious Albion was especially fond of firing these infernal engines at night from behind cover, so the muzzle flash was hidden and vast amounts of gas bombs suddenly hit their target. Art!
Pioneers wiring up a projector
This is from the Western Front, showing how the Teuton projectors were dug in, angled at the enemy, and with slightly varying elevations so the bombs spread out over an area. An attack with depth, you might say.
In the small hours of 24th October 1917, the Austrian artillery began to bombard Italian gun positions with gas shell, neutralising their counter-battery and infantry-support abilities. Half an hour later the Teuton projectors let loose, targeting a critical Italian defensive position at Bovec, to the rear of a ravine, which was impossible to hit with anything except very high-angle fire.
Seven hours later, when the Teuton 35th Pioneers stormed the position, they might as well have strolled in, as all the Italian defenders were dead, all 700 of them. This left a great big gap in the Italian defences. Art!
The Italian defences had NO DEPTH, unlike the Hindenberg Line depicted above. On the Western Front there would have been two other lines located a mile or two behind the first line and each other; there would have been 'switch' lines at ninety degrees to these lines, preventing the enemy from rolling up a line from the flank. A lack of such basics caused the whole line of the Italian Second Army to crumble and retreat, forcing the far less-affected Third Army to the south to also fall back; they lacked positions in depth, too.
So there you go, the Italians guilty as depth-charged*.
A Leading Question
We'll get to the question in question eventually. In the meantime here's a bit of musing upon time. Art!
Conrad does like this film. Conceptually, it's a look at what they thought the future would be like, from a Thirties perspective. Hence gigantic robots, robots with long tentacle arms, ray guns (inevitably) and enormous rocket-ship arks. All done with vacuum-tube technology, I bet. Art!
This, on the other hand, is the future as people of the Eighties thought it would look like, with gigantic corporations controlling life, artificial intelligence run amok and colonies across the Solar System.
The question is, what do they have to do with this - Art!
There you go. I think we can begin to list the answers. You see, when SCATWOT was made, they wanted an actor with gravitas and presence to play the arch-villain (who was really just misunderstood), and they settled upon -Courtesy of the BBC
A dead guy. Not just dead, long dead. This dismal fact was seen as a mere minor problem to the film-makers, who used the incredibly advanced technology of 2004 to recreate him from previous screen footage. Art!
That answers one of the BBC's questions. As for the Bruce Sterling novel, Conrad distinctly remembers one character trying to contact Fyodor Rumin via a video-link. What he got was an AI-generated replica of his mate, which carried out a desultory conversation, because Ol' Fyodor was, not to beat about the bush, dead. His remaining technology was quietly camouflaging this demise with massaged video film and audio, and might well have kept up the charade forever. As long as nobody forced his front door open.
1985 and 2004 are waaaaay behind us in the rear-view mirror of time, but we are bordering on the kind of AI that Mr. Sterling foresaw. What an interesting tomorrow we shall have!
Hmmm. That went on far longer than I anticipated. A picture and a paragraph, I thought. Bring on more pictures!
That Journey With Berni
Yes, I do randomly add or subtract the final 'e' because that's the kind of rock and roll rebel I am.
Only joking. If I were such a rebel, it would be spelled "rock 'n' roll', thank you very much.
Right, let us do due diligence and check if Mr. Wrightson's picture is available.
It is. Art!
Typical Berni. He goes into detail about how he created this and with what, yet not what the subject matter concerns. An axe-maniac parading around in broad daylight armed with a (notched and neglected) chopper without any concerned citizens alerting the police? O well, poetic licence. Conrad is also curious about what the shadows hide.
The Vicissitudes Of Venality
Conrad hasn't checked the values of the Orange Land Whale's TMTG stock for a while, imagining that it would have soared into the stratosphere after his election triumph <hack spit>.
But no. Art!
Finally -
I baked a Gingerbread Mug Cake last night, which has been left to cool so it can be iced without said icing running down the sides. Will finish tonight and post photographic proof of same.
Chin chin!
* Ouch.
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