Talking About The GRail

I Am Going To Be Cheating A Bit Here

So what's new? you may ask, as BOOJUM! and Conrad and conceit go hand-in-hand, or tentacle-in-tentacle - let us not be species-ist here - amongst the blog.  Well, today we are going to be tackling another of the items lurking in the collective consciousness referred to in "The Seventy Greatest Mysteries Of The Ancient World", hereafter abbreviated to '70'.  Art!

     In fact I am going to be examining half of their mystery, because '70' bites off more than it can chew, since it begins with the 'King Arthur' mystery.  We here at BOOJUM! are utterly at home in totally ignoring anything to do with Arty and his origins and instead concentrating on the Holy Grail.  Art!

     Here we see a British naval convoy escort, as improvised in the days before they had enough aircraft carriers, where a lone Hurricane would be launched into the air to intercept Teuton aircraft, from a rocket sled.  Launched off a rail - hence LaunchinG-Rail.  Forgive me if I omit the hyphen.  I did warn you about lies and deceit, didn't I?

      ANYWAY back to the Holy Grail.  There is, of course - obviously! - another popular film that centres around the Grail and the quest to find it - Art!

     Widely considered to be the last decent IJ film, certainly in financial terms, it centres around the Holy Grail, and the Nazis (yah boo hiss!) who want to insert themselves into the legend.  Obvs they learned nothing about mucking about with Biblical artefacts, because things went swimmingly for them first time around, right?  Art!

Indy wants a refill

     Now, this wouldn't be BOOJUM! if we didn't go back to sources.  The word  'Grail' itself comes from the Old French 'Graal', which in turn derives from the Latin <spit hack> 'Gradalis' for 'Bowl'.  Now you know.

     The Holy Grail is supposedly the chalice used by Jesus at the Last Supper, and has proven to be a literal font of legends and myths, incorporating pre-Christian legends as well.  The most prevalent one is that Joseph of Arimathea, a rich Jew in Judea, was imprisoned for 12 years but kept alive by the Holy Grail.  The detail of how, exactly, he got hold of the HG is left obscure.  Art!

Ol' Joey

     Upon being released from captivity by the emperor Vespasian, around 60 AD, which is oddly specific for a myth, he decamped to Ultima Thule - Britain - with the Holy Grail.  There he founded the monastery at Glastonbury and began to convert the pagan islanders to Christianity.  As for the Holy Grail?  It vanished, never to be seen again, which makes this cynic wonder if it was ever within this island's bounds at all.  This led to the Arthurian legend of the Knights of the Round Table setting forth on quests to discover it, which is a lot of the narrative in 'Le Morte d'Arthur' by Thomas Malory.  Yes, I have read it actually.

     Enough of Arty already!  Back to the Grail.  Art!

     

     I thought I'd enlist the bigger budget.  'The Last Crusade' has it that the Grail was carried out of the Holy Land by three knight crusaders, which sort of traduces one myth about the Grail that explains it's disappearance.  Rather than being brought to England by Ol' Joey, it was instead delivered by angels, like a winged version of Amazon I suppose, and entrusted to a group of knights.  On top of a mountain, to make it more defensible against the light of finger and Nazis, too.  Were anyone not of perfect purity to approach the Grail, it would vanish, which is a great way to explain away the absence of any such artefact.  You can't see it?  That's because you're impure, not because it doesn't exist.  Art!

     This is the relevant page in my 'Brewer's'where I looked up Ol' Joey of Arimathea, whose entry you can see at lower starboard.  As ever, I cannot keep my roving eye from scanning other entries in 'Brewer's' as it's much too compelling, the swine.

     Direct your attention up near the top of the port side.  Whom do you see there?  'Indiana Jones'.  I keep telling you, everything is connected to everything else.

A Positive Dumpster-Fire

You'll be delighted to know I have found another citric Youtube compilation, with the compelling title "I'm Out, Have Fun Fixing This".  Here's one I found highly amusing, especially as it concerns cheese.  Yes, cheese.

     So - the narrator, an Overworked Underpaid Toiler, hereafter OUT, worked in receiving and storage for a very large health  food store, in the frozen storage section.  Clearly there were problems, because all the other staff had quit, apart from the Witless Abusive Manager, hereafter WAM.  Art!

     So there should have been at least half a dozen other staff to cope when a very large shipment of dairy and cheese came in, to the value of $130,000.  A very large shipment indeed!  WAM ordered OUT to sign for it all and put it all away, solo.  Whereas they needed the whole of their shift to do their own job, not adding in 6 other people's work as well, not to mention signing for that amount of stock was so far beyond their job description it was out of sight.

     OUT did as their name foretells - they quit.

     WAM signed the whole lot in and it all went to waste.  He was fired.  Doubtless told not to use them as a reference on his resumé, too!

You What?

Conrad still has a bemused chuckle at the bizarre sidebar adverts that Facebook used to throw up.  Log-counting software?  Portable lumber mills?  Well, clearly my news feed has acquired the same pash for wildly inappropriate items.  Art!

     'CNC' stands for 'Computer Numerically Controlled' lest ye be unaware.  What is a router?  O I thought you'd never ask!  A machine for cutting and shaping materials, up to the softer types of metals and alloys.

     WHY did the algorithm think Conrad was desperately in need of a router of any description, let alone a computerised one?  I mean, it's not as if I post about all the practical DIY work I do.  Conrad is the least practical person I know.

Points And Laughs

You may have already noticed that I am not a fan of Donold Judas Trump and delight in pouring a heaped handful of hate over his saggy beer-keg body.  Nor am I a fan of Nigel Farage, whom I nicknamed 'The Nasty Little Man' many years ago, and have been proven right ever since.  Art!

     No, Nigel Farrago, you don't get your girning visage displayed on the blog.

     I wonder what the story is here?  Should I click on the link?

     I did, and gosh!  The Tiny Toxic Toad has been doing dodgy deals concerning the purchase of his house in Clacton, and refusing to clarify what happened to Farage Gin.  Reading between the lines it seems to have been an utter failure.  Tee hee!

Progress Report

I posted yesteryon about a video clip stumbled across on my news feed - this one apparently tailored by the algorithm correctly, as it was about the Unpleasantness in North Africa, an area of keen interest to Your Humble Scribe.  Art!

     I've watched it all, without making notes, so <heavy dramatic sigh> I shall have to watch it again with my notebook and pen.

     Conrad, being a digger for facts and info, also got his "Official History of the Mediterranean and Middle East" and had a look at it's summation of what that video clip from Fact Bytes deals with: Operation BATTLEAXE.  This includes an explanation of why the outcome was so.  We may come back to this.

     I bet you can hardly wait.

On The Theme Of Insulting Politicians

Here's a delicious little barb created by the folks in Scotland who despise the Orange Land Whale, and who put this plaque on a bench at one of his golf courses.

And with that we are DONE!