Is That One Cannot Leave Well Alone
Whereas another person might come across an item, shrug and move on, Your Humble Scribe's mind works a bit differently, since he will focus on said topic, and come back to it until he is satisfied he's squeezed all the lemon juice out of it. Pretty much the ethos of BOOJUM! in fact.
So! Allow me to begin with a dramatic illo from the nation state of Slovenia, the northernmost of the regions that used to constitute Yugoslavia. This came from a Google question about which castle is the most unique in Europe, and i have to confess I took the bait and Googled. Behold the utilisation of natural features, which we will come back to. Art!
This is, as you may have guessed, a castle; Predjama Castle, unique in that it was constructed in the mouth of a cave system. This allowed the owner, one Erazem of Predjema, to sneak out and raid the local lands via secret tunnels inside the mountain. More particularly, when the Hapsburgs laid siege to the castle, said vertical tunnels allowed the castle to bring in food and water from outside, mitigating said siege. Which meant, instead of being over in a couple of weeks, it took over a year. There is a local legend that Erazem was killed on the toilet when a treacherous minion explained about his routine, allowing the Hapsburgs to commit toilet-targetting and totalling him.
Which, in turn, implies that the Hapsburgs were not carrying out military operations elsewhere thanks to having to focus on a long, debilitating siege. There's a thesis to be written on what else the Hapsburgs might have been doing to their advantage in 1484 were they not tied up in said siege. Art!
ANYWAY I want to bring up a picture used as a standby on my work laptop. Art!
Wherever this is, it's most certainly not in This Sceptred Isle as our waters tend to a muddy, opaque grey-green grottiness.
Conrad was intrigued. What are we being shown here? Well, nothing definitive showed on screen, until, after several iterations, the legend 'Porto Flavia' came up at top starboard. Art!
What are we looking at here? Art!
This is manifestly architecture carved into a cliff face. To what end? Unlike Prejdama, it does not seem to have any defensive utility. Is it a domestic residence? Because if so it must have been tunnelled into from behind in the cliff face. Then again, why have a sea-front property with no harbour, port, dock, pier or jetty? The only way from sea-level to that balcony is up a barely-there vertical path that ends in a blank wall. You might as well not bother.
Very mysterious! Art?
Conrad began digging.
Firstly, what we're looking at here is an Italian geology site from a century ago: Porto Flavia, based on the island of Sardinia. A century ago the Italians had decided that they were going to exploit the mineral resources of this island, and they appointed a most adept engineer to design their means unto: Cesare Vecilli. Art!
The first schematic above shows how the internal site was constructed; chambers, galleries ad shafts all excavated by hand, from the seaward side rather then inland, creating huge vertical shutes that dropped raw mineral into the tunnel to carry ore outwards, with various powered small-gauge trains doing the haulage. You can then see that the gantry to load ships was retractable, which is why it doesn't show in the original Flavia picture I posted, and which threw me out. No need for jetties or piers if your load comes in overhead whilst you sit in the channel. Why it was a retractable arm instead of a permanent one I have no idea, as the former seems more complex to construct. Art!
What you've got here is the internal railway that moved stuff, and the dimensions of the tunnels involved, unfortunately without puny Hom. Sap. for scale. Vecilli named the mine after his daughter, showing what a whimsical old git he was. The ability to drop directly mined minerals onto the transportation level and thence to ships waiting to load cut production time by 70% and I'd like to think Cesare got both recognition and recompense but by the time his system was in operation Mussolini was in power and it may not have happened.
A Little Ungentle Shoeing
Word has it that Pumpkinhead has been sent to Walter Reed Memorial Hospital for the third time in a year, because - he's so incredibly healthy? They worry he's going to drop dead in front of the press conference cameras? Fall asleep? Go on about his Missile Control Centre Strategic Disco Defence Ballroom?
Allow me to base you with another awful, awful photo of him. Art!
He looks as if a Donold Trump mask has been stapled to a hog's head, and the hog is being pursued with a cattle-prod. Which is an Olympic sport in some countries.
Don't forget, pilgrims, reading this blog will automatically disqualify you from entering South Canada if ICE review your past 5 years of social media! Heck, 1 year of reading BOOJUM! would do it, or even a couple of months since we started featuring awful pictures of Fat Caligula.
More seriously about the last item, I confidentially predict that there will be numerous EU members refused entry to South Canada thanks to their descriptions of King Piggy on social media. Lawsuits ahoy! Art?
From when he looked healthy. Well - healthier. Okay, okay. at least not dead. Art!
Delver Your Milk, Lady?
One of the things that has come out of recent Ruffian bombardment of Ukrainian civilian settlements is that the Ukrainians ,bless them, are willing to carry on continuously with their everyday life. Art!
These are Ukrainians queueing up for coffee at a shop that has been blammed by a Ruffian missile, despite the windows being put in and there being plaster across the floor. Art!!
Indomitable milkman
From 86 years ago and not on the Continent but with the same DEFY ENEMY fault vibes. I seem to remember that the dictator responsible for the above did not come to a happy end.
Just to be clear, this is from the days when milk in bottles was delivered daily to one's doorstep.
O and about Putin's favourite cudgel, the 'Oreshnik' missile that the vatniks salivate about. In reality it's a cobbled-together Frankenstein monster that Mordorvia can only produce in ridiculously limited quantities, something like three per year. The older models cost $30 million apiece, the current ones $150 million, and they have a 50% failure rate. Art!
This one destroyed 3 garages. You can do the mathematics yourself; $10 million to destroy a garage is a pretty poor return on investment.
In reality it's even more embarrassing, as the second Oreshmik the orcs launched ended up hitting their own occupied area, meaning it's now forbidden to ever mention it was launched in the first place. Remember, 50% failure rate.
Back To 'Charley's War'
This is the first trade-paperback volume of the collected works from Pat Mills and Joe Colquhoun, which I bought at BOVINGTON TANK MUSEUM in September last year. Eight months ago and I still have finished Volume 1 <hangs head in shame> BUT I have been putting in more reading of late and am now near the end of Vol. 1, hoorah!
So I thouoght I'd share some of the artwork. Art!
Charley is struggling out of a partially collapsed dugout, carrying a Lewis gun and intent on inflicting misfortune on the Teutons. Allow me to draw your attention to an item near his forearm. Art!
A well-observed detail. What Pat and Joe depict here is a tin of 'Whistler's Jam', which was so ubiquitous there was even a doggerel poem about it. Art!
The original article
The artwork of Joe is beyond reproach, but Pat buys into too many stereotypes to be without criticism. We will absolutely be covering this in later blogs! I bet you can hardly wait.
Finally -
Another bit of QI Banter.
"Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital." Aaron Levenstein.
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