You'll Be A-Mazed

Possibly Not

Not very subtle, I know.  Whatever, it's not as if you pay to read this scrivel.

     This morning I was stricken by a severe lack of a potential Intro, bumbling around for a good twenty minutes trying to find a matter with sufficient depth to write about.  What first came to mind was the theme of Ruffian railways getting a good spatchcocking of late.  Art!

     But then I realised I'd need to do background on this, and I couldn't find the Tweet about repair trains that was pretty relevant.  Nor was Conrad sure he'd be able to muster enough words to make a proper Intro.  

     Here an aside, yes ALREADY, Twitter user 'Trent Telenko' has stated that the Ukrainians are using a 'RAM-X' loitering munition on the Mordorvian railway network, which would have been gobbledygook four years ago.  Art!

     Big enough to make your bottom pucker, hmmm?  With a range of 100 miles PROUD IMPERIAL MEASUREMENT THERE it makes Ruffian logistics planners suffer sleepless nights and hair loss.

     ANYWAY maybe more of that later.  Then I decided to check out the next Mystery in my tome 'The Seventy Greatest Mysteries Of The Ancient World', hereafter '70' because RSI.  'Theseus And The Minotaur'.  Hmmm that had a bit of promise.  First of all - Art!

     Sorry for the odd angles.  This is the beginning of Alex's terrifying and involuntary wandering in the labyrinthine bowels of the earth in "Journey to the Centre of the Earth", which is far more entertaining than the novel, I can tell you.  Art!

     No, I haven't read it.  No subtlety about Ol' Phil on this one, either, with that title you know it's not going to be about fluffy cyborg bunnies or lambs full of psychedelics.

     ANYWAY you may be getting a sense of what Conrad is vaguely stumbling towards here; mazes and/or labyrinths.  Because that's one of the abiding motifs from 'Theseus and the Minotaur'.   Let us define each of those nouns, as Conrad is always a stickler for accuracy.  'Maze: a complex network of paths or passages, designed to puzzle those walking through it.'  Thank you, Collins.  'Labyrinth: a mazelike network of tunnels, chambers or paths, either natural or man-made.'

     To briefly go over the background of the Minotaur, whom is half the story after all.  Due to a bit of insulting the gods by King Minos <NSFW legend redacted> his wife gave birth to the Minotaur, half-bull, half-human.  Art!

     Typically Ol' Minny is portrayed as having a beastly upper torso, all the better to make him seem monstrous and more of an opponent to any hero happening to wander by.  We don't get any information on it's infancy or youth, just that Ol' Minny was a beast through and through, so probably not the apple of King Minos' eye.

     Kingy seems to be the kind of person who designs the incredibly elaborate death-traps that James Bond escapes from so often.  Did he quietly dispose of Ol' Minny before it got huge?  Send it into exile?  Keep it in a basement?

     Of course not!  Instead he had an enormous labyrinthine maze constructed, in the middle of which was Ol' Minny, because that way it's beastly nature didn't put Minos' subjects in danger.  Art!

     You may see the plot holes here, gentle reader.  The Minotaur was shut up in that maze for years, easily long enough for it to discover a route out, or just stumble upon it randomly.  Where did it's food and water come from?  Presumably supplied from outside the maze; so Ol' Minny, exhibiting animal cunning, might follow them on their way out.  Or, using brute force, just knock holes in the maze's walls and march out.

     To cut an already long Intro into digestible chunks, the Greek (that distinction is important) hero Theseus bravely volunteers to be a sacrifice to Ol' Minny on Crete, but proves that an edged weapon in the hands of a strong man outreaches the horns of a bull, which is to say he slays the Minotaur.  He doesn't lose his way in the labyrinth thanks to a ball of silk twine, which he unravelled behind himself.  Smart chap!

     The Mystery posed by '70' is this: is there any basis in reality for any of the above?  Art!

     Yes, actually.  What you see above is the floor plan of the Minoan palace on Crete circa 1,400 BC,   It was an immense site that covered 5 acres and possessed over 1,000 rooms.  So what we get in the myth is a garbled Greek recollection of Minoan civilisation when they were very much in it's shadow.

     As for matters bovine, the Minoan civilisation revered and feted bulls, as seen in famous art depictions.  Art!

     So the Greeks may be cocking an insolent snook at the Minoans by insulting both king and bulls.

     There we go, enough for this Intro.

Conrad The Hair-Splitting Pedant Rides Again

I couldn't let this one lie.  Whilst trawling my news feed, what did I notice but an item about one of the legendary Cold War strategic bombers.  However - Art!

     THIS IS NOT A VULCAN!

     It is one of the RAF's 'V' bombers, yes, except it's a Vickers Valiant, not a Vulcan, which has a delta-wing design as any fule no.  Art!

     Valiant at top, Vulcan at bottom.  3/10 'Found And Explained' must do better.  

"The War Illustrated Edition 212 3rd August 1945"

Whilst the war in Europe had ended months before, there was still ferocious fighting going on in the Far East, where the situation for Japan had slid from 'dire' to 'disastrous', all the more so as the entirety of the Royal Navy could now be sent to provide a helping hand.  Art!

     At top South Canadian Marines enter the Okinawan capital, Naha, very warily, keeping an eye open for snipers and booby-traps.  That feller standing up at port is being rather stupid; there's a reason his mates are all crouched down or behind cover.

     Below that, more Marines rush over the open, past the kit of others providing cover.  At port bottom, the officer to starboard is General Simon Bolivar Buckner, shortly to be killed in action.  To starboard a boarding net from a ship has been re-purposed to tackle a shore obstacle.

     The fighting on Okinawa was so severe because it was the last link in the Pacific island-hopping campaigns.  The next step would be Operation Olympic - the invasion of Japan, which would be resisted even more thoroughly than Okinawa.  Art!

When Self-Serve Turns Hostile

Yesteryon, doing my weekly shop at Morrison's, there were no tills manned, or staffed, or womaned - the staff are nearly all female - so it was off to the self-serve tills, where a single harassed employee buzzed around like a fly on meth, dealing with at least ten shoppers.

     One of them, allowing my purchase of Old Speckled Hen, must have jiggered the till, as there was none of the usual squawking delays in putting through my other bottles with alcoholic contents.

     Problem One: on getting home I had a bottle with the anti-theft device still attached.  Art!

     Problem Two: Conrad has no anti-theft cap removal tool <sad face>.

     I did have an impressively sharp kitchen knife and a pair of tin snippers, mind, and I went all-out on that cap.  Art!

I WILL NOT BE THWARTED!

     Took me a good 10 minutes of sawing and prising, so the cap did it's job.

     Conrad only now realises that he took both bottles through the entrance scanners completely undetected.  Oooops.

How Very Apt, Given My Reading Material

Conrad saw this on the BBC's News website and, being Conrad, has to weigh in with his opinions, which are the same as facts*.  Art!

     Yes, because 97% turn out to be perfectly mundane phenomena, like Venus or car headlights on a distant highway.

     One phenomena that has alterered since the Forties is where these UFOs are speculated to come from; originally they were claimed as being Martian or Venusian, until science caught up with fiction and both worlds were revealed to be lifeless and hostile.  Then the point of origin changed to, oh, the Andromeda Galaxy, which is one heck of a commute - two million light years.

     Conrad the cynic signing off!

*  In his mind - the horrible truth courtesy Mister Hand