First Of All
WASH OUT YOUR FILTHY MINDS! thank you. For this is BOOJUM! and we don't go in for any of that NSFW nonsense, not even innuendo. When I talk about a load of bull, guess what? that's exactly what I mean.
You see, I was inspired by Edna this morning. After blessing us with her presence and scoffing her breakfast, her action of choice is to barge her way into Wonder Wifey's room, despite the door being firmly shut. The word I thought most applicable was 'bulldozer'. If bulldozers came cat-sized and covered with fur. Art!
It has cat. Caterpillars, that is.
There you go, a bulldozer, just so we're clear, which is known as 'Buldozeris' in Lithuanian.
Naturally, because I am Conrad, this mean wondering where the word 'Bulldozer' came from. Typically one would expect it to have been invented by Henry Thomas Bulldozer or be a product of the Bulldozing Company out of Newhaven, Connecticut.
Not a bit of it. Here I took up my "Brewer's Dictionary Of Phrase And Fable" (every home should have one). "The origin of the word is in the verb 'To bulldoze", which originally meant to intimidate by violence, probably from bull (the animal) and an altered form of 'dose'." A bulldozer was someone who threatened in this way, and the term then passed to the powerful machine used for levelling."
It would be a short intro, without many bulls, if that were it. So it's not. As ever, Conrad's eye strayed o'er the pages of my Brewer's and - so much bull! The first definition was that of a blunder. Art!
You and I might call leaping over a bull a blunder, but back in Minoan times on Crete they did this kind of thing for shizzle and giggle.
ANYWAY the other sense was that of a contradiction in terms, which is where the waggish of us immediately chorus 'Military Intelligence'. Supposedly the Irish are prone to this variety of bull, which is supposedly supposedly taken from the surname of one Obadiah Bull, an Irish lawyer present in London during the reign of Henry VIII. Art!
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| "I sentence you to death by - EXECUTION!" |
Next is a coin, to wit: a five-shilling piece. Conrad has never encountered this form of specie before, so it must have gone out of use a long time before decimalisation. Art!
A coin. Maybe even the right one.
'Half a bull' was half a crown or, in our quaint old LSD currency AND ONCE AGAIN WASH OUT YOUR FILTHY MINDS 2/6 or two shillings and sixpence.
Another definition is the shortened version of 'Bullseye', which is what non-archers call the gold.
Then! there is the stock market version of 'Bull', which is a person who purchases stocks or shares as a speculative buyer, hoping that their value will rise before the day of settlement. Art!
Once again, according to Brewer's: "Since the early 18th century the terms 'bull' and 'bear' have been broadly used on the Stock Exchange to describe an optimist or pessimist in share dealing". I'm so glad that's been clarified.
Guess who gets a mention in these headings under the overarching 'Bull'? Why yes of course - obviously! - 'Bulldog Drummond', who gets the usual rather dismissive ' - his actions and attitudes are thus hopelessly racist, protofascist and anti-Semitic'. Hmmm so only 'protofascist'? Is that because, as created in 1920, he predates Mussolini and the rise of fascism in Italy? Art!
The irony of a Jewish film magnate making a film from anti-Semitic novels is not lost on me, and now it's not lost on you, either.
O another hearken back to Tudor times, under 'Bull-baiting' in Brewer's. This sport was popular under the Tudors and Stuarts, whereby a bull would be tethered and thus prevented from either escaping or turning on it's captors, and was then set upon by dogs. Sounds horrid to modern sensibilities, doesn't it? Probably protofascist as well. You will be happy to note that it was made illegal in 1835, which is before the abolition of slavery (1837) for all you fans of emancipation.
Good old English values at play. O what people got up to before teh Interwebz, hmmm?
I think that's enough of bull for today. Thus today's title.
Talking Of Provoking The Normally Placid
We normally avoid Politics here on the blog, as there is nothing more likely to cause strife and discord than nailing one's political allegiance to the mast.
However - you knew it was coming! - there has been a bit of an event in Canuckistan, where the Orange Land Whale has, thanks to his ceaseless braying about Canuckistanians becoming South Canadians, provoked quite a reaction. Art!
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| He won't like that! |
For your information, Mister Carney used to be the head of the Bank of England, which is an assurance that he is absolutely top notch as a bloke. One can only imagine how cross the Canuckistanians must be at being traduced to the extent that they mount a protest vote and make Mike Myers put out an hilarious yet understated political advert. O Mike! Art?
Here's One I Made Earlier
Yes, I keep nicking that quote from 'Blue Peter' don't I, sue me. Allow me to motivate Art with this red-hot toasting fork -
Your Modest Artisan is about to finish off the last of the gingerbread made last week. What was on the opposite page of my '1,000 Recipe Cookbook', why 'Fruit Gingerbread'. For whatever reason, they require this one be baked in a square 7" tin. The 'Fruit' part was merely a couple of ounces of sultanas so I substituted the last remnants of a packet of raisins, sultanas and mixed peel, ha! t
ANYWAY I lacked the half-tub of sour cream they said was a requirement, and the Co-Op didn't have any left on the shelves, so I topped it up with low-calorie Greek yoghurt. Structurally it seems to have done the job. I also upped the amount of ground ginger used, and sifted the flour as last time there were little specks of clumped uncooked flour. I have a slice later on Conrad will let you know it tastes. Proof of the pudding and all that.
A Bigger Bang
You know Conrad by now. The bigger the BANG the more interested he is. So, naturally this sidebar item caught my eye. Art! and stop whining, just rub a bit of Sudofed into it.
American volcano about to erupt after 66 earthquakes recorded in a week
Mount Spurr in Alaska has experienced 66 earthquakes in just one week, signaling increased instability around the volcano.
Okayyyyy. If it's only 'about' to erupt, why do they have a picture of a volcanic eruption in full flow? Methinks this is lazy editing and they've simply used a stock photograph in place of the actual Mount Spurr, because it looks better. Art!
Reverse-image search doesn't help much as it brings up a whole lot of un-named volcanoes erupting. Art!
That's Mount Saint Helens, a possible contender. Art!
That's Mount Spurr being treacherously quiescent. It has erupted previously in the Fifties and in 1993, so another eruption is not out of the question. Given that it's in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness one doubts any Alaskans are actually at risk, because even the densest person on the planet would get the message after 66 successive earthquakes.
"The War Illustrated Edition 207 29th May 1945"
Now I have to track down where those photographs are stored. Camera, phone or already on file? I blame old age and gin collectively.
The usual middle-page montage. Art!
Cross-referencing TWI with "The Story Of The Guards Armoured Division" I can tell you that these are Shermans of 1st Battalion the Coldstream Guards, firing on Teuton positions near Bremen, in April, whilst the war was still hot. Art!
Those are the tail-fins of a 60-pound HE rocket, normally used by aircraft. Late-war, the British had the ingenious and rather horrid idea of fitting them to the turrets of tanks, usually Shermans. They were not very accurate but the arrival of howling hurricane of HE even as a near miss would convince the stoutest-hearted of opponents to retire at great speed. Art!
A bigger bang and all that
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