Gone For A Burton

We Are Digging Into British Idiom Here

More specifically, the times of the Second Unpleasantness, where, for many years, the only way of delivering justice upon the Nazi hordes was via air-delivered ordnance.  Art!

     Take your oil-swilling hump and serve it against a glasshouse!  On the way there please ensure your Sidcot is free from castor-oil lubricant t

     ANYWAY - er - please forget any nonsense from the Second Unpleasantness about terror, destruction and havoc delivered from the skies, because in this Intro we have more than enough in all three dimensions.  

     Or don't, as I've not explained it.  'Gone for a burton' was an euphemism from the Brylcreem Boys during the Second Unpleasantness, referring to someone no longer present thanks to being dead.  It being impolite to call them 'dead'.  In the First Unpleasantness Biggles would have used the euphemism 'Gone west', as in Batson, who had 'Gone west' owing our hero forty francs.  1917 francs, mind you, so at least £237 in today's currency.  Art!

     ANYWAY AGAIN to get back to the meat of the matter, Your Humble Scribe is now over half-way through 'Nemesis Games', Number Five in 'The Expanse' series of novels, and the narrative cycles through all the different characters.  The most interesting one is of the 'Rocinante's engineer, Amos.  Amos Burton.  Hence today's title.

     Amos had an extremely horrid upbringing in Baltimore, which he rarely refers to and does not care to reminisce about.  He generally stays away from Earth and only returns in this volume to find out how and why his old foster-mom died.  Natural causes, it transpires, otherwise a whole lot of people would have suddenly died.  Art!

Amos and friend

     Whilst still on Earth, Amos elects to visit Clarissa Mao, whom is being held in an underground prison in North Carolina, for multiple crimes including murder, and whom had been a temporary shipmate aboard the Rocinante.  That subsumes at least 500 pages of plot and character development.  You can thank me later.

     SPOILER! SPOILER! SPOILER!SPOILER! SPOILER! SPOILER! SPOILER! SPOILER!

     It's at this point that things get interesting,  since a radical OPA Belter faction has decided to rock the Earth's ashes, by hitting it with rocks.  The OPA is a scion of the asteroid belt, hence the name.  These rocks are not the variety you can kick aside; they mass millions of tons and are travelling at very high speed.  Art!

     This chap is the first to see the initial impact, which was thought to be a cosmic accident.  He's around for about five seconds before the blast wave hits him and he vanishes.  I have gone back and forth in the novel to see if the authors - for they are a joint team writing under a common pseudonym - mention exactly where the first Space Rock hits, but cannot find any details.  All they say is 'North Africa', which is a pretty large piece of real estate, and 'Morocco', which only slightly reduces the geographical spread.  

     Aha!  Teh Interwebz reveal that the impact was at Laghouat.  Ta WWW.  Art!

     Nor is it in Morocco.  Algeria, pilgrims, Algeria.  We are told that Rabat, which is in Morocco, was 500 kilometres west of Ground Zero.  Also that the strike registered as 8.75 on the Richter scale.  The one they use to measure earthquakes.  To get a grasp on that, that's the equivalent of 30,000 Hiroshima nukes.  These are BIG rocks.

     The second strike is also not precisely defined, merely as being ' - in the middle of the Atlantic ocean'.  This strike is even more deadly than the first, since the subsequent tsunamis affect every coastline along the North and South Atlantic, creating disasters from Greenland to Brazil.  Art!

     From 'Deep Impact' but it illustrates the point well.  We are also told that Dakar, on the African coast, is hit by the shockwave an hour after initial impact.  Art!

     We then get to the third impact, as if the first two weren't enough.  This one hits near Bethlehem in North Carolina, the same state that Clarissa is ensconced in, and where she and Amos are deep underground.  About thirty stories deep, if I recall correctly.  Thus, they survive the impact but are trapped, as the lifts don't work and the stairs have collapsed.  Bottom!

     Amos' other crewmates from the Rocinante are all off-world, watching this apocalypse unfold with horror, which allows the authors to impart that the death toll is at two hundred and fifty million within a couple of hours, shortly to become billions.

     Grim stuff but my word! is it entertaining.

More Grim Reaper Statistics

Here's an interesting statistical comparison.  Art!

     Ruffian medical care is as up to date and modern as it was in the Crimean War of 1857.  This means that the normal ratio of dead to wounded in modern warfare of 1:3 is, in Mordorvia, closer to 1:1.  So, approximately 750,000 dead and 750,000 injured.  Art!

     18 dead and 624 injured is a ratio of 1:34, which is again an illustration of modern South Canadian military healthcare as compared to that of the orcs.  Grim, yes, and also illuminating.

More Gentle Shoeing

It has to be gentle as Droopy is pretty much dead on his swollen meat-balloon feet at present.  Allow me to introduce the latest of our mocking photos of the Big Orange Oaf Himself.  Art!

The Swollen Sweaty Senile Sepia Saggy Sackbutt himself

     Now you know why one of my nicknames for Donold is 'DJ Tango', which might be obscure to non-British folk.  Art!

     The can might be beaded with moisture if it is straight from the fridge.  The Farting Fraudster is beaded with sweat because merely moving his massive carcass is an effort.  Art!

     Here is a still from a sequence taken after he descended the steps of Air Force One, where he's visibly struggling to breathe, to the vast delight of many cruel people on Twitter (including me).  Art!

     Which brings me to an interesting vlog by Chris Cillizza, pictured above.  He brought up a promise that SSSSSS made months ago, that he was going to visit all 35 critical districts in the runup to the mid-term elections.  That means one per day.  Has he started yet?  

     No <gasps of shock and horror>.  Instead he's going to cheat at golf, or to meetings with governors in safe Republican seats, or football matches.  He is definitely not 'on the stump' as the phrase goes, campaigning for Republican candidates.  One reason, as Chris pointed out, is that candidates in tight races don't want to be associated with him in any way whatsoever, as he is massively unpopular.  The second is that he is a morbidly obese 80-year old with bad circulation, who is now unable to get down a flight of stairs without difficulty.  Doing a campaign appearance over the month of October would finish him off.

   Hmmmm.  GET OUT THERE AND CAMPAIGN, DONOLD!

More From That List Of Books 'Like Greybeard'

I bet you thought I'd forgotten about it, didn't you?  You lucky people, here we are again looking at post-apocalyptic sci-fi novels.  Art!

     'Or, How We Got Along After The Bomb'.  Conrad has definitely read it, but I cannot remember anything from the novel, except to say that the blurb definitely mirrors 'Deus Irae', which I have also read and can remember.  A combination of old age and gin, I think.  Hang on -

"Dr. Bloodmoney by Philip K. Dick is set in a post-apocalyptic world following a nuclear disaster caused by scientist Bruno Bluthgeld. As society attempts to rebuild, the story follows several quirky characters, including the telekinetic Hoppy Harrington and Bonny Keller, who navigates this strange new reality. The plot weaves through their lives, exploring themes of redemption and the human condition amidst chaos"

     You can see the parallels I'm seeing, can't you?