Sorry, There Are No Dogs
Not literal ones, although the phrase 'My dogs are barking' comes to mind. What am I talking about? O I thought you'd never ask!
If you're uncertain what I'm talking about, Conrad will explicate, as it's primarily a South Canadian expression meaning 'My feet are sore'. Annoyingly it has no entry in my 'Brewer's' (though there are a plethora of other phrases to do with Dogs) so I had to look it up on teh Interwebz <hangs head in shame again>. Art!
According to internet wisdom, 'My dogs are barking' came into use as a result of a South Canadian cartoonist, and is possibly related to the Cockney rhyming slang 'Dog's meat' equating to 'Feet', which sounds a bit thin to Conrad.
ANYWAY I had an eye check-up in Shaw yesteryon, at 15:30, so, not knowing the route or schedule of the 402 that travels there, I walked into Royton to catch either the 181 or 182 into Shaw.
Plot twist: according to the bus stop timetable the 181 is a mythical beast that doesn't run in daylight, and the 182 had a 90 minute gap in it's schedule and was next due at 16:00. Ooops.
One reason I set off early was in case Bee Network served up a platter of poop like this, so I started walking and was halfway there, taking a breather on a bus stop bench when Hay Pesto! the 402 turned up.
Thus my aching feet.
ANYWAY AGAIN we are back to 'Greenland', and the 'Clarke' I referenced is the killer comet, not the co-leader in 'The 100'. Art!
Clarke Griffin. Just so we're clear.
Do keep up.
When last we left them, John, Allison, their son Nathan and a group of neighbours were watching with stunned horror as the first fragment of Clarke impacted in Tampa, Florida, not the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. By wild coincidence the television broadcast managed to get footage being broadcast from a traffic helicopter. Art!
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| Before |
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| Very, very after |
Once again, there is no explanation of how badly the trajectory of Clarke was plotted, so badly that it was projected to land over a thousand miles away from the actual impact point. I hope someone was fired for that!
The scriptwriters were obviously blissfully aware that there are a slew of organisations whose brief it is to watch the heavens for threats like Clarke AND PLOT THEIR TRAJECTORIES. We have covered a few of these in the past, orgs such as the International Asteroid Warning Network, emphasis on the 'International' because the South Canadians are not able to quash any findings it makes or warnings it gives. Art!
As an example, this is the MeerKAT array in South Africa, confusingly built under the auspices of the European Space Agency, and it's mission is to detect potential Earth impactors. NASA itself has an automated detection system, 'Sentry', which plots and warns of potential future impactors. Art!
This shot lingers for a few seconds and Conrad is confused. Where did the television studio get this image? It looks to be taken from a satellite. One suspects a TV studio doesn't have the budget for their very own satellite. If they did, which is an enormous IF in flashing green neon forty feet tall, then it would be positioned to catch the impact off Bermuda. Or, by wild raging untamed coincidence, it just so happened to be over Florida when the Clarke fragment hit? Honestly, a graphic illustration or overlay on a map would make more sense.
Moving along, John's phone buzzes with another Presidential Alert. Art!
- then it puts a message up on his television screen. Conrad is unsure if this is technically possible, but we'll handwave that away out of mercy; we can't be horrid all the time. Just most of it. Art!
AND Nathan, I just didn't photograph that part of the message. Once again, apologies for any less than stellar pictures here, thank you Netflix and you anti-Snip software.
I mentioned unanswered questions before, and these messages, and John's response "I don't know why we were selected", raise yet another. Why have he and his family been selected for emergency relocation? He has no idea, it's never explained and I can only repeat my speculation from the start of this sequence of analyses: because he's into rough, tough, gruff stuff and can help rebuild the world after it gets devastated.
Predictably, the party breaks up as this message really put the sabre-toothed tiger amongst the pterodactyls, with other people asking why John? and wondering if they'll get a message, too.
Spoiler alert: they won't.
What A Difference Twenty-One Years Make
If you lack Conrad's interest in things that go BANG you may want to skip this item. But - I will know about it and I NEVER FORGIVE. Your choice. No pressure.
Right, so we've been covering super-heavy artillery on railway mountings of the First Unpleasantness, because these weapons were far too large to travel by road. There were exceptions, like the British 15" howitzer and the Teuton 'Gamma Morser', but these were set up as static installations. Art!
That's a Gamma. As you can see, not mobile at all.
ANYWAY we've gone off-topic once again, one of our cardinal sins. What I intend to talk about is heavy artillery, specifically the British 8" howitzer. Art!
The 'BL' means 'Breech Loading' which is a bit redundant since muzzle-loading artillery had gone extinct decades before. This species of gun was definitely heavy artillery, firing a 200 PROUD IMPERIAL POUNDS shell out to 12,000 yards. Art!
If this weapon looks similar, that's because it's the same weapon, but with a liner added to the barrel to reduce the bore from 8" to 7.2", and pneumatic wheels added. It's recoil system wasn't all that, so it had huge ramps positioned behind the wheels, which it would ride up and then fall back into position. A bit crude, but it worked - usually. The reduction in calibre allowed it to fire a 200 pound shell, but this time out to 16,900 PROUD IMPERIAL YARDS. For Your Information, this is the type of cannon that Bombardier Spike Milligan served with. He met Harry Secombe when chasing after his gun, which had run over the top of the ramps and gone astray.
Land Of The Free And The Grave
Art!
Over a period of five years in the 1960s, a US president was killed and then his brother was killed while campaigning to become president. In that same period, two of the nation's most prominent civil rights leaders were assassinated too.
To that list you can also add Prez Ford, Regan and ex-Prez Trump, as 'near misses'. The last British Prime Minister to be assassinated was Spencer Perceval. In 1812. Do I hear 'Make America Great Britain Again'?
As Mentioned Before -
The trip to Bovvie is on for tomorrow, so I have a travelling case packed with clothes, toiletries, two large books to pass on - one for Sal and one for Col - which balances the books literally as my 'Official History of Australia in the War 1914 - 1918' arrived yesteryon. See, Wonder Wifey? As one door opens another one closes, swings and roundabouts and other Word Count boosting persiflage. Art!
I didn't take a photo so the AI Art Generator took a shot, and it's so hilariously inept I had to post it. Art!
That's what it should look like.
And with that, Vulnavia, we are well and truly done. DONE!
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