This Is Going To Be Convoluted
Because the straightest line between two points is the most boring one.
Now, today's title will mean different things to different cultures, particularly those of Perfidious Albion and our M8s across the Channel, the French. To anyone who grew up in the Eighties, the image that comes to mind is this. Art!
Conrad counts himself as being lucky, as at that time I was into being painfully hip, which precluded paying attention to televised vermin. This particular individual seems to have kick-started a wave of other animal puppets appearing on the small screen, such as 'Gordon The Gopher'. Art!
Gordon the Grotty Gimboid
Gophers, may I point out, are NOT native to Perfidious Albion. Nor yet are aardvarks, wh
ANYWAY if you are French then "The Song Of Roland" will conjure up one of the epics of French chivalry out of the Middle Ages, concerning one of the scions of Frankish knighthood: Roland. Art!
Roland and his men were a rear-guard over-run by the Saracen hordes, dying to the last man in a desperate last stand, which is kind of Quixotic, except about five hundred years before Don Q. The poem that commemorates his death has been the bane of French school children and students for a thousand years.
As I said, two different cultures.
Now, let us abruptly change tack and track and visit instead the wreck of the 'Moskva', before it went to the bottom of the Black Sea. Art!
I have read a report about how completely unfit for service this ship was; if it had belonged to any other navy it would never have left port. Ha! Do you see what I did there? 'Left' and 'Port'? Don't you - O you do.
ANYWAY this vessel was one of a class of guided-missile cruisers that were designed and intended to hunt down and destroy South Canadian aircraft carriers. To this end they were armed with - you may be ahead of me here - guided missiles. Art!
There were sixteen of these missiles, eight each to port and starboard, and they were big beasts indeed, intended to hit their targets from sufficiently far away that the cruiser wouldn't be counter-attacked, and large enough to inflict serious damage. Art!
Which is why the Moskva is now a submarine; they stored sixteen enormous missiles filled with fuel and explosive, with nothing but a thinly-armoured container to keep the brine off, out on deck. When an Ukrainian missile paid a visit, a very large and deadly fireworks display was the result. Art!
Sorry, I watched a clip of 'Christine' yesteryon and it seemed fitting, if not exactly apt, as Christine could repair and re-assemble her sinful metal self.
ANYWAY AGAIN Art!
This, gentle reader, is the French 'Roland', SAM system, with a rotating turret atop an armoured hull, tracked so it could keep up with French armour on the battlefield. A little ungraciously, they have christened it 'Verdun', after the ghastly and prolonged bloodbath of the First Unpleasantness. Fought against the Teutons, whose territory this vehicle would very probably deploy to see off the Sinister Hordes if the Cold War ever turned hot. Art!
When the missiles have been fired, the container tubes are ejected from the launch rails, and yes you could get away with this kind of littering in the Seventies. No, the hapless crew do not have to get out and reload, this is NATO (or, more accurately, OTAN) kit, which is designed with crew survivability in mind. Art!
The missiles are reloaded from a stockpile kept securely inside the vehicle, meaning nobody is exposed to nasty bits of high-velocity metal, nor is Roland liable to be blown to smithereens by an externally-stored cache of missiles that get hit by the opposition.
Also, somebody has been watching too much 'Thunderbirds'.
I've been waiting for weeks to come up with a rationale for including this item from a Tweet posted by 'Voltigeur'. It also resonates with a quote from "The Seven Pillars Of Wisdom", where Ned and his desert brigands are travelling tol mount a demolition and ambush, when they hear a Turkish aeroplane approaching: "For the loads of blasting gelatine, my favourite and most powerful explosive, and the many ammonal-filled shells of the Stokes' gun would be ill neighbours in a bombing raid." They decamp to cover, on the same principle as 'Verdun' above.
Thank You 'Covert Cabal'
Conrad is unsure if I've mentioned CC before. Presuming not, let me elucidate. CC, along with 'Jompy' and 'Highmarsed', is one of those intrepid amateurs who go over Maxar satellite data and bean-count the numbers and type of Ruffian kit they have in their stockpiles, the ones dating back to the Sinister era. Yes, they are probably duplicating the efforts of the infinitely-better resourced MI6 and DGECE, but those latter don't share their data with we, the general public, do they?
CC did an interesting historical look back at the orcs 94th Arsenal at Omsk, which pre-dates not only Putinpot, but the Cold War as well. Here it is as of today:
Have a gander at it as of the Thirties. Art!
CC then dug up a map from 1884:
The Ruffian, 'twould appear, is very much a creature of habit and fixed behaviour. You see those railway lines of 1884?I bet they are the same ones going into the arsenal to this day.
Nothing earth-shaking, just a neat historical comparison.
"The War Illustrated Edition 208 June 8 1945"
If you're wondering why they're still concentrating on the war in Europe a month after it finished, don't forget the obligatory 2-week delay between taking a photograph and publishing it. By this time there was no need to avoid printing anything that might help the Nazi war effort, as Nazism had officially been crushed, so it was probably an ingrained reflex from years of censorship. Art!
As the blurb has it, these are British troops from the 6th Airborne Division, meeting up with the Sinisters on the Baltic coast. I have allowed this cover picture to stand, even though it features Ruffians.
There is a subtext here, because the British were anxious to cut off any Sinister advance into Denmark, by getting to the Baltic coast first, which is delicately omitted from the text, as at this point it wasn't the done thing to suspect your allies of ill-intent. Art!
Ironically, the red areas are those liberated by the British, meaning Denmark was spared being 'liberated' by the Sinisters, for which they are truly grateful.
"The Boys" Season 3
Your Humble Scribe is up to Episode 5 now, and even if they do diverge wildly from the original comics, the Grand Guignol over-the-top gore is still there, right in front of you. Art!
That there is 'Soldier Boy', a creation specifically for the television series who had never been mentioned prior to Season 3, so they're retconning (quite creatively I may add) like heck creating a backstory and history for him. I am interested to see where they go with this character.
Also, Homelander is being raised up as almighty, omniscient and all-powerful, which risks the series being turned into The Adventures Of Homelander. He needs a good squashing. Conrad has not looked at any Episode synopsis so I don't know if this is forthcoming. And - why is A-Train still considered a superhero when he can't even climb a flight of stairs without risking his heart imitating a firecracker?
Meanwhile, The Headlines Just Write Themselves
Conrad was looking for a small item to add in, just to get us a bit higher in the Word Count, and guess what I espied? Art!
Having buses on the route itself would be a major improvement, and so would buses that turn up on time. I know! What a radical concept! Buses in the service of passengers, who knew?
One could riff on this for a couple thousand words, easily, but it feels unsporting to pick on such low-hanging fruit.
Finally -
That's enough wibble for today. More scrivel tomorrow. I bet you can hardly wait.
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