No! You Are Not Going To Get Pictures
Of Canuckistanian ladies in swimsuits, sunning themselves on rocks. Although it might not be a bad image to entice traffic with. Art!
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| CAUTION! Cooks Tours do not recommend this behaviour |
Having done that, now I have to explicate about the sirens of mythology, don't I? The name is, of course - obviously! - from the Greek, 'Seira', meaning 'Rope', because (and the translators are, frankly, reaching here) of their ensnaring characteristics. Which came about thanks to them being half-woman, half-bird, thus giving them unparalleled singing ability. Imagine Annie Lennox with an Hellenic accent not a Scottish one. We aren't told which half was the birdy part; top, bottom, left or right, and the illustrators of mythology simply used them as an excuse to paint cheesecake. See above for proof. Art!
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| Flying lessons courtesy Plummet Airlines |
There is some debate as to how deadly the Sirens were. In a few versions they merely charmed their listeners so much that they neglected to eat or drink and thus wasted away, which kind of leaves one wondering how the Sirens did for food and water. Did they all stop singing to have lunch, or were they on a rota? and if the latter, who got the short end of finishing the singing on Friday afternoon? Art!
Ulysses. that archetypal Greek trickster, got around the temptation to stop eating, jump overboard or become a Siren-snack by having himself bound to a mast, whilst his crew all stopped their ears with wax. Talking of wax - Art!
An inversion of the trope, you might say.
Having thus established the credentials of these temptresses of antiquity, let us now abruptly change tack and jump to the French scientist Charles Cagniard de la Tour, for 'twas he whom came up with the name 'siren', applying it to an instrument used to measure tone and oscillations. Art!
That's his 'siren', which would trouble an illustrator to render at all saucy. More Wall-E than feathered temptress. Don't ask me the principles upon which it operates, Conrad doesn't know technical stuff (Kyle Reese I feel your pain).
From this invention it was a mere hop skip and jump to dub the warning horn sounded at factories a siren, too, this one sounding to inform that work had started or finished for the day. Presumably because one needed a piercingly loud noise to be heard above industrial machinery.
You may be wondering about those Saskatchewan sonic screechers and we still need to make a detour before arriving at our Canuckistanian destination. Art!
The peoples of This Sceptred Isle got to know the sound of sirens O-so-well during the early years of the Second Unpleasantness, when the Luftwaffe would turn up uninvited and drop big explodey things everywhere. The sound of sirens warned people to seek shelter before the Teuton's unpleasant packages arrived, and indicated that the peripatetic pifflers had moved on afterwards.
More pertinently, sirens lived on in the Cold War, as warning that there would be a few buckets of 'instant sunshine' heading your way, and even today Conrad gets a cold shiver if he hears one of them. Art!
This is where we meet up with the Canuckistanians again, for the lady above works for the Canadian Broadcasting Company, and yes, that is a siren she's indicating there. These things are scattered all over rural Canada, which means a lot of sirens because most of British America is rural. Art!
A handful of examples. Just to prove that they are mentally different from their cousins south of the border or west of The Pond, these rural communities use their sirens to indicate noon, and frequently six post meridian and a late night call at nine or ten p.m. The locals are all perfectly happy with this, which in Perfidious Albion would trigger a plethora of heart attacks, and riots with gunfire and bloodshed in South Canada. Art!
By virtue of the blessed lord above, none of these sirens were ever used for their primary purpose during the Cold War, an example of which you see above. So, rather than junk them, communities in Saskatchewan and elsewhere across the prairies used them as time signals. Art!
The irony of 'Warburg', hmmmm?
Fortunately for anyone as cowardly and craven as Conrad - my two best qualities! - these things are coming to the end of their serviceable lives, meaning that rust and ants are seeing them off and by the end of this decade they will have decayed. One hopes.
Cynical Corporal Cavils Constantly
Yes, we are back with the grumpy German gefrieter, who is distinctly unimpressed with the martial qualities of his officers, other companies and the entire Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine.
10 September 1944
Martin makes a report on the cowardice of Zeisler at Merxem. Shubert takes my pistol away with a very flimsy excuse. I ignore the cattle dealer and all the sods around him. The old Company pets are now with the transport. Art!
Conrad's Commentary: Cowardice and theft in the Ubermensch? Who would have believed it! The 'cattle dealer' is GGG's insolent nickname for his company commander, whom does not command the fullest respect, I think it's fair to deduce. The 'pets' are the officer's favourites, who seem to have been sent out of harm's way, only 'seems' and not 'have' because the Allied 'Jabos' (Teuton slang for fighter-bombers) were always always always stooging around for things to strafe. Unless your vehicle resembled a bush it would attract lethal attention.
Conrad: Points And Laughs
Your Humble Scribe is always claiming to avoid anything to do with Politics, Religion or Current Affairs, and equally breaches this policy if he thinks it will garner more views. Shallow, that's me.
ANYWAY here's a headline that follows our brief of not covering politics. Art!
Ho ho, whaddayaknow. She's also been given a prison sentence and a £100,000 fine, tee hee!
For those unaware, this 56-year old bint is following in the repulsive footprints of her father, who was also a neo-Nazi and who died without gaining any significant political office. By the time she's un-banned she'll be collecting her pension before the next Prez election.
With that far-right nutjob being barred in Romania, it's a sad day for apprentice dictators.
Hey, we seem to have steered clear of our new favourite targets for a few days.
Blasting From The Past
When I was working in Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell, for all of a decade if not longer, one of my favourite targets was First Bus, who truly were low-hanging fruit. So low they brushed the ground, truth be told. They had a great title that allowed citric mockery.
What do we have now? Art!
These gamboge bodgers. "Bee Network" to boot. Less conducive to insults. Nor can I insult "The Metro" either because I only travel by bus at the weekends when the nation's finest chip-wrapper is not supplied.
Well, one supposes that's proof enough that BOOJUM! does adapt over time. Eventually I guess the sheer brio of insulting the world's richest man, the world's stupidest man and the world's bloodiest-handed man will pall eventually. One wonders who or what the new targets will be?
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| A man with a target on his back |
Our Journey With Bernie
Continues, with his 'Frankenstein' sub-set of FPG trading cards, and it's good to see that Bern doesn't make the mistake of confusing Viktor Frankenstein with the monster he creates. I tried searching the title of 'F3' which is "In Search Of Secrets" and got text and picture as different search results. Art!
"I loved the movie adaptation. The makeup on Karloff was incredible! It's easy to see how that movie has become an icon of popular culture."
At a guess, Conrad is going to say Ol' Bern's artwork for this sub-set is all going to be monochromatic, it being the best medium for brooding Gothic subject matter. No light and frothy pastels here!
Finally -
I'm going to finish off that slice of Tunis Cake. It would be rude not to, after all.
