Walker!

Do Not Castigate Us For Being Ambiguous

For it is our stock-in-trade.  

     Here a slight aside.  'Castigate' means to 'chastise severely' lest ye be unaware, and it hails - inevitably - from the Latin <spit hack> 'Castigare', meaning 'Forced to be pure'.

     Well, if Cordell Walker enters the bar like that, you'd suddenly find yourself becoming pure and wholesome, lest he turn your body into a pretzel requiring 8 hours of surgery to untwist.  Incidentally, it ran for 9 seasons, so some of you are still human responsible for it's longevity, and Conrad suspects that Chuck hitting 61 might be one reason it stopped.

     Then there is that particular brand of uisge beathe, as the Gaels have it, and Conrad would not recommend drinking it pure, rather dilute it with ice and soda or your insides will not be happy with you.  Art!

     Then we might - just might - be talking about this entertaining, satirical and only vaguely-true story (fie on thee, Alex!), featuring a bravura performance by Ed Harris, as the South Canadian mercenary leader who became president of Nicaragua.  Honest.  Trust me, bro.

     Here another aside - Alex Cox is responsible for the world's largest student film, 'Bill The Galactic Hero'?  This deserves it's own Intro and w

     ANYWAY no we're not talking about 'Walker'.  Art!

"Get away from her you BITCH!"
One of the most heartfelt lines in cinema

     Here we have 'Aliens' P-5000 Powered Loader, which might be stretching things a little if being described as a 'walker' since it's more of a 'stamper', with fallen arches a design feature.  Ellen's skill and dexterity with it gives her a lethal left and right cross, a crushing handshake and built-in blowtorchery.  Pure class.

     Not, however, what we're focussing on here.  Art!

     

     Voila, the 'All-Terrain Scout Transport' from the 'Starry Watz' franchise, being a bipedal walking war machine occasionally nicknamed 'Chicken Legs', but not to the crew's face or in front of Darth Vader, who is known to have minus sense of humour.  Coming in at nine yards tall - Imperial measurements, doncha know - it suffers problems if the terrain surface is composed of rolling logs.  Conrad wonders if it has an 'Emergency Sit' button to resolve difficulties like that, or would that make it look too much like a broody hen?  Just wondering.  Art!

     Possibly ungainly, definitely deadly, this is the 'Exo-suit' or 'Prawn-Mech' from 'District 9', and the reason it's not used to the best of it's abilities is because the operator is a human - only partly, by this point - Wikus Van Der Merwe.  He bimbles about and bumbles his way through the various weapons, slaying the corporate gunslingers, despite having exactly 0% experience in using a Mech-Prawn*.  Art!

Walker chuck truck

     Okay, let's get to the meat of this matter.  Your Humble Scribe was intrigued by a sidebar item viewed on my news feed, which tends to regurgitate the same tired old persiflage about writing wills or solar panels.  Art!

     So this one stood out.  Since we are not knee-deep in walking war machines, and the ones above are entirely fictional, there has to be a failure at the end of this tale, that may yet still be interesting to follow.  Art!

     Hmmm bit of a lightweight compared to Ol' Chicken Legs.  The narrator claims that it could move at 35 m.p.h. which is being a tad economical with the truth, because we're looking at a computer animation here.  The reality is a little less rapid.  Art!

    Meet the GE 'Pedipulator', where they tried to solve the problem of having mechanical arms operated remotely by a puny human, by having them attached to a cabin, instead of a 'suit' worn by the user.  Their client here was the South Canadian Army, who wanted a machine that could navigate rough terrain, sloping terrain, fallen trees, upright trees and dense vegetation, all the while carrying 1,000 pounds in cargo or infantry.  Art!

     The operator was strapped in, not sitting down, as he needed to adjust the vehicle's stance based on his own reaction to position and tilt as the Pedipulator moved across terrain.  On it's 12-foot telescoping legs.  Did I mention them yet?

     By now you may be wondering what stopped the Pedipulator from being front and centre in the invasion of the Dominican Republic (April - September 1965)**?

     For one thing, it was a gas hog.  I can't find figures for consumption, only the narrator bloviating, but at best 1 mile per gallon, and perhaps only a quarter of that, since his comparison is with a tank, that known gas hog of gas hogs.  

     The centre of gravity was also verrry high, making it dangerously prone to overbalancing and toppling, and if it fell over, there was no way for it to get back up on it's feet again.  Ooops.  Art!

     None of that put off a modeller, who created this resin version, doubtless to grace a wargamer's table in a 'What If?' scenario set in Vietnam in 1967, as the US alliance closes in on Hanoi -

     I think that's enough of Walkers for today.  Art!

No need for legs or blowtorches, but may consider chicken or prawn 

Conrad Gloasts

I'm allowed to, it says so here in the Terms & Conditions.  

     What am I blethering about?  O I thought you'd never ask!  Art?

     This is one of the original volumes from 1966, bagged for under £40 and in Very Good condition - I'll say, it even has a plastic cover over the dust-jacket.  The seller was 'Holybourne Rare Books' and whilst the P & P was a bit pricey, the packaging was excellent and thorough, and it arrived mid-afternoon Wednesday after ordering late on Monday.  Definitely would use them again.  Art!

     Yes, I already have the 'Naval & Military Press' softback, and here's an illustration of the softback reprint (top) and the original (bottom).  Art!

     The original is miles better thanks to the colours used, which get completely lost in the reprint's monochrome reproduction, not to mention there are a lot of fold-out maps in the original.


To Quote "Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads"

'It's the only thing to look forward to, the past' as their theme song goes.  We could have a whole item about this sitcom, and it's predecessor, "The Likely Lads", except not today.  Sorry.  Besides which, our South Canadian cousins might need subtitles, thanks to their Geordie acce

     ANYWAY a couple of months ago Your Humble Scribe finally set up one of the 'Modern Warfare' hex-and-counter games purchased at 'Crisis Point'.  This was a series of S & T games published in the mid-Seventies, looking at their near future, and our distant past, of 1980.  Art!

     This game is 'DMZ', the acronym for 'De-Militarised Zone', which refers to the boundary between the Norks and the Sorks, who may I remind you are still at war, no peace treaty ever being signed.  The DMZ itself is that yellow hexline stretching across the board.  Here the counters are all set up prior to the first move.

     First move: the DPRK (Norks) have advanced to contact into the DMZ.  That long line of units lower port are a mixed bag of Sork and South Canadians, whom cannot move freely for several turns, reflecting Nork surprise.

     First move of 15.  I shan't bore you with a blow-by-blow account, so expect only highlights of what transpires.  I have already mucked up the first moves Nork combat - in my defence the rule about Turn One and Two was pretty well hidden away.


Nothing Whatsoever To Do With Anything Military

Conrad was well aware that he had 12 remaindered pork sausages in the fridge that needed using up, before they gained a decorative coating of salmonella and mould.  There are things I won't eat, just to be clear, apart from pineapple and parsnip.  Art!

     Here is last night's cooking, simmering on the hob.  Sausages successfully stewed.  It has quite the bite as I used the 'Guess and shake the container manfully' method of measuring out chilli powder.  There is enough to last into next week without me making a Sunday Stew.  Without taking into consideration the pack of remaindered sausages and pork loin sitting in the freezer, alongside the ice cream.

Finally -

I am typing this on August 1st, so Dry July has passed on by and I will be sinking a few Old Speckled Hens tonight.  Wish me luck.  And hopefully no Translator calls lasting an hour that begin five minutes before end of business.

* Or should that be a Prawn-Mech?

**  Confess, you've never heard of this, have you?