You'd Indisputably Toss Your Head And Snort With Derision
"Conrad's being informationally elusive again, on purpose," you'd mutter, sucking ruminatively on the stem of your meerschaum pipe and judging how far away the croquet hoop was.
But of course - obviously! - I am, because that way I can wheel in a whole load of O'Connors by way of scarlet sardines, which are one step beyond herrings in the scheme of things. Fewer bones, too, whi
ANYWAY Art, you sluggard, put down that nuclear fuel rod and get to work!
It's a musical. OF COURSE I haven't seen it.
The slightly gawky individual to port is one Donald O'Connor, who had an extensive screen and later television career that involved dancing. This is probably his most famous moment on celluloid, a standout in a looooong list of films he appeared in. Art!
This is just over 20 years-worth of his oeuvre, completely omitting his television appearances. He was a busy chap.
Not the O'Connor we're looking for, mind. Art!
Those unlucky enough to live beyond the hallowed shores of This Sceptred Isle might not know this chap, especially as he's dead. Meet Tom O'Connor, who came to fame later in life as a comedian and television presenter. The most impressive thing about Ol' Tom is that he taught mathematics in school, and ended up an assistant head teacher, which makes one wonder how awful the job must have been for him to change horses in mid-stream and become a stand-up comic.
Still not whom we're after, though. PATIENCE! Also, Art?
 |
| No, I won't. I'm horrid like that. |
Yet another O'Connor, Ol' Hazy got her time in the spotlight in the Eighties, although she's still around, having decamped to France. Er - that's about it for her.
I have a couple of other O'Connors I'm going to keep in a strategic reserve, because it's time to introduce the main event, that being -
Richard Nugent O'Connor. Art!
Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of him when he was a subaltern or brevet officer and you'll have to make do with this one of him as a captain, having reverted to that rank after the First Unpleasantness ended.
Ol' Rick - any other surname sounds NSFW - had joined the army, gone to Sandhurst and been commissioned into the Cameronians. He was promoted to Lieutenant and put in charge of the 7th Division's 22nd Brigade Signals unit. Art!
Those are chaps from 1st Battalion Royal Welch Fusiliers, part of the Brigade.
We first meet Lt. O'Connor exactly one hundred and ten years ago, during the intense and bloody fighting during the First Battle Of Ypres, when he was 'disabled by an accident', which is neither killed nor wounded nor knocked out, leading Conrad to suspect he fell down a flight of stone steps and did himself that way. Art!
His next appearance is during the battle of Loos, where, now a Captain, he was described as doing 'splendid work' in organising an attack on the Teuton trenches at short notice, from a hotch-potch of mixed battalions and reinforcements. Art!September 1915
Eerily similar to Ukraine .....
Here we are on the 5th of July, after General Watts, the 7th Division's OC, went to see and clear up Mametz Wood, taking with him Colonel Bonham Carter (yes, grandad of that gel Helena) and the Divisional Signals Company under the command of - Captain O'Connor.
By the time of that unlovely and ghastly blood-letting of epic proportions known as Passchendaele, Ol' Rick was now a Major, and second in command of an infantry battalion of the Honourable Artillery Company - British military regimental histories can be confusing as yes, this was an infantry regiment NOT an artillery unit. Art!
Not very Honourable if you're on the receiving end
You may be asking why I'm giving you a potted biography of this warrior, and the reason is that the 7th Division, with it's constituent units, was sent to Italy in late 1917 to help the Romans after their disastrous defeat at Caporetto. In Appendix I in "Military Operations Italy 1915 - 1919" there's the 22nd Brigade, under Brigadier J. M. Steele, with the 2//1 battalion Honourable Artillery Company. I need to draw a line under this Intro here, as otherwise the blog will be three times normal length and all about Ol' Rick.
Demise Of The Robots
There has been an interesting and widespread phenomenon on Twitter (are you listening Elong Tusk?) across all kinds of users, mostly those with a large following. Art!
Shaun's sudden disappearance of Followers is not unique, others have been wondering about it, too. The consensus is that these were actually Ruffian 'bots', not genuine followers, and that now Objective Number One has been achieved, electing the Orange Land Whale as Prez-elect, they're being stood down until the next big disinformation drive.
Conrad has also noticed a diminution in the number of BOOJUM! traffic hits, from the frankly ridiculous ones of recent months, to this - Art!
"Plague War" By Jeff Carlson
Your Humble Scribe finished reading this tome today, and I'd like to chime in with a few critical observations. I can't possibly hurt Mister Carlson's feelings, he's been dead for 7 years. Art!
If you like being immersed in squalid, dirty, stinking, bruised, battered, borderline starving protagonists, then this is the novel for you!
There's a few plot holes, too. Ol' Jeff has the Ruffians and the Chinese and the South Canadians all flying scads of aircraft, driving trucks and tanks and jeeps in large, not to say vast, numbers.
Where is all that fuel coming from? The 'machine plague' impacted a year and a half before the events of this novel. Stored petrol has a limited shelf life, after which you can't power anything with it. Being able to sustain invasion fleets of ships and aircraft and tanks and trucks is a pipe-dream. An oil-pipe dream? Art!
A major omission that is perhaps a little unfair to criticise, is the lack of drones. This novel came out in 2008, long before we saw drones become effective on the battlefield as scouts, bombers or kamikazes. Having these as delivery systems for nanotechnology would require the whole novel, and the prequel, be re-written. Art!
The myth of the "Second army in the world" was still alive and well in 2008, but we now see the Ruffians as having feet, legs, arms and brains of clay. They can barely manage to invade a neighbour with a common land border, and the idea that Ol' Jeff's Ruffians can successfully co-ordinate, mount and sustain an airborne invasion of South Canada from thousands of miles away in the Caucasus is just silly.
There is a third novel which I think I'll be giving a miss.
They Lied To Us!
Perhaps. You may remember the 'ship scene' from "Leave The World Behind", which really sells the film in a microcosm of what's going on - gradual changes that end up completely unbalancing the whole world. Art!
This is where the "White Lion" makes landfall, or perhaps sandfall, throwing up an enormous bow-wave of water and sand. Art!
When the prow finally stops, there's a giant moraine of sand in front of it, tons and tons of it. Art!
Let us now contrast that with real life. This is the "MV Giovani" deliberately beaching itself at a ship-breakers yard in India. Art!
No explosion of sand and water, nor any bow-wave of sand. Before you quibble, I checked how low in the water the WL was, and it wasn't heavily loaded, if even loaded at all.
Finally -
During the Cold War years, there was an art to interpreting who, how and where various Sinister politicians stood on the podium when making an address to their servile hordes in Red Square.
I have now encountered the modern-day equivalent. Art!
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