Rotab Nalu

Which Is "Ulan Bator" Backwards
You do remember my mention of Ulan Bator a couple of days ago?  Ulan Bator, capital of Mongolia?  Fortunately I remember, and my promise to explain what it was, and I keep my promises.*  So there you have it, although nowadays they have decided to go with the native pronunciation "Ulaan Baatar" but since this is BOOJUM! and I run it my way, we're going to stick with Ulan Bator.  Art?

The city

     I don't care if you object to our naming policy; get back to me when, oh, say Ceylon changes it's name.
     Here an aside.  It's a bit of a trek to get there, so there's not much reference in pop culture to Ulan Bator, although it does crop up in "Journey To The Far Side Of The Sun", featuring Roy Thinnes, the former architect turned undercover spy.  After that documentary series "The Invaders" came out his undercover days were over, so he became an actor.**

"I'm Air-Sea Rescue, Ulan Bator"

     And why have it backwards?  Well why not!
     (Actually, and I only just realised this, JTTFSOTS imagines a parallel Earth where everything is backwards to our Earth - thank you Steve!***)
     Now, time to wake the motley in a hospital bed and pretend it's been in a coma for  years and it is 2118!

When The Firefly Knocks -
This particular Firefly being a 30 ton tank, not a flourescing insect, and that knocking is the sound of an extremely high-velocity anti-tank round.  In today's earlier post we contrasted the size of one of these rounds with the more common 75 mm H.E. shell, and there's a big difference.  Art?

The tank in question

     For we are back discussing David Render's "Tank Action", and his observations on the Firefly.  One major disadvantage was that the 17 pdr gun barrel had to be secured whilst in transit, meaning any sudden emergency required a crewman to hop out and unlock it - and if it was an emergency, then probably under fire, too.
     The next item was the highly distinctive and enormous muzzle flash and report when the gun fired; an unwary tank commander leaning out of the turret at this point would have their eardrums split, and possibly also have their eyebrows burned off.

Not a Firefly but the principle is the same

     Teuton panzer crews were not daft, and realised that the Firefly was probably the nastiest thing they would come up against when fighting Perfidious Albion - except maybe HMS Warspite and her 1/2 ton shells - and they would try to pick them off soonest.  Hence that first photo's tank has it's barrel painted to break up the distinctive outline.

Conrad: Gloasting
I did win the last round of Pub Quiz on Thursday, and have neglected to do a bit of gloasting about it until now.  The last round win earns 4 beer tokens rather than three, and also an extra.  Art?

My 8 correct answers
(Yes I do know they're upside down)

      I think "Saturn" was my best answer, prompted by "Saturnalia" the Roman agricultural festival, which was the question.
     Not only did I get the beer tokens, I got an extra.  Art?

A bottle of whisky

     With teaspoon for scale.  I know what you're thinking,^ and I don't care that this is the world's smallest bottle of whisky, because I really don't like the stuff and would never drink it for enjoyment.  However, it is just the right size for the amount needed to make a Honey & Whisky Cake, and I'd hate to have to buy a full-sized bottle of whisky just to make an occasional cake.

     So there we are.

"Your Mission, Cat -"
  " - should you choose to accept it, is to infiltrate into The Humanz lair, and there, with your trademark subtlety and cunning, incapacitate the large, white-haired one who wears a perpetual scowl, and prevent him from writing in his notebook."

The evidence

     CAT:  Mission accomplished!

     Really, of all the places to sit, Jenny chooses either my paper, my book or my hand, surely none of which can be comfortable?  I dunno.  Katz!

Finally -
I decided that no recipe was going to get the better of me, for baking is about the only practical thing I am good at (if you discount nuclear weapon assembly), and so I had a second try at Spiced Applesauce Cake, except this time I used self-raising flour instead of plain.  Art?

Greek meet Greek

     This was a far more successful effort, browner and better risen, although still a touch doughy inside, so next time (if there is one) I may cut down on the amount of apple puree considerably - 5 oz. instead of 10.



*  Sometimes.
**  I have this right, don't I?
***  My subconscious, and the laziest element of the BOOJUM! editorial team
^  And one day I will return DARPA's "borrowed" telepathy helmet to them -

The Devil's Digital Distraction

Or, The Mobile Phone
Unlike Wonder Wifey, who would die within minutes were she ever to be separated from her mobile phone, your humble scribe treats mobiles with lofty disdain; we didn't need the damn things to build and maintain an Empire, did we?  No.  That's good enough for me.
     However, as mentioned, WW cannot understand how anyone cannot long for the latest mobile phone with all the fiery desire of those who need a fix.  So, when she looked at the old model - Art?

Don't ask me the make or model.  It's a phone.

      - you could tell there was going to be trouble.  Unkind words were said about it, along the lines of "does it have a bird pecking out pictures on bits of stone inside it, like 'The Flintstones'?" Also "It's from 2014!" as if that were explanation enough.  Thus it was put to me that a new phone could be mine, and it would do everything but make coffee for me.  You know your humble scribe by now; a creature of habit who hates any change in his routines, so this concept was greeted with considerable suspicion.  Art?

"What is this Tel-E-Fone of which you speak?"

     The new piece of kit arrived yesterday, and was immediately pounced upon by WW, who set it to sinking and upfigging and sundry mysterious deeds.  Of course, the REALLY big question was whether I would need a new phone number.   Fortunately the answer to that was "No".*
     Apparently it is a Samsung Galaxy J3, and the only reason I know that is because the laptop said so when I was uploading pictures.  Art?

Again, it's a phone.

     Okay!  Enough pettifogging prating about phones, let us send the motley out into the thunderstorm with a four-foot metal rod attached to it's head!

Firefly
No!  Not the Joss Whedon sci-fi series, which I kind of liked, and which you have to watch in order for the film "Serenity" to make any sense, as I saw the film first and wondered what was going on.

What it's not

     No, I am of course - obviously! - referring to the Sherman Firefly, a variety of tank as used by the Allies during the Second Unpleasantness, because we are back with "Tank Action" By David Render again.
     Here an aside.  The Sinisters loved the Shermans that got supplied to them by the South Canadians, because they were amazingly reliable compared to the gimcrack stuff churned out in Ruffian factories, and they were palatial inside by comparison, too.
     Right, we need a picture.  Art?

Not sure where this is.  Bovington?

     The gun is noticeably longer than the standard 75mm gun of the normal Sherman, because it is the frightening 17 pounder as produced by Perfidious Albion.  This fired an extremely high-velocity armour-piercing round that would render any Panzer it hit into flaming scrap metal.  If using a state-of-the-art APDS round then it would Swiss-cheese regardless of where it hit - side, mantlet, hull front, none made any difference.

75mm shell on the left, 17 pdr on the right

     David points out that, whilst the Firefly was the bees knees in taking out panzers, it was a bit rubbish in other respects.  If you look at the photo you can see a big bin on the back of the turret, which is the tank radio; the gun took up so much room there wasn't any space left for the radio, so it got stuck outside, making it vulnerable.  The hull machine gun was also removed, because 17 pdr ammo took up a lot of room (just compare the shells above).  The 17 pdr high explosive round wasn't very good, either.
     I can see your eyes beginning to glaze, so we shall move on -

Don't Be A Brute-O, Say Hello To Pluto
I just made up "Brute-O" because I can't think of anything else that rhymes with "Pluto", apart from that author PJ Caputo, and he has nothing at all to do with astronomy.
     Anyway, I did make a pun about the planetismal being almost a "sled dog" and never explained it, so here goes.  Art?

Nice and big so you can pick out the details

     Those are dunes, not of sand, but of solid methane ice crystals, because Pluto is cold - -2000C would be a scorcher of a day there.  The atmosphere was thought to be too thin to support anything like winds able to transport ice crystals, but here the dunes are as proof that something's made them.  Perhaps a mechanism to do with the mountains at the top of the picture.
     So, Sir Patrick Moore's assertion that this world is icy and cold is correct, yet he was entirely wrong about it being dead and static.

Finally -
I wonder if the motley read this first?

     I imagine Number One is "Don't go out in a thunderstorm".  Oh well, motleys are two-a-penny.



*  Phew!  A narrow escape there.

From Dead Dog To Red Dog

And Pretty Close to Sled Dog
No! This is nothing to do with The Mansion's four-footed mobile alarm system, Edna Wunderhund.  Rather, it is a tortuous pun on that dreadfully unfunny Disney hound, and the proud discovery of Clyde Tombaugh back in 1937.  
     Pluto.
     You may not be up to the minute on contemporary astronomy, so I'm not going to be gentle or subtle about it:  Pluto is no longer a planet.

NO!  Dog Buns, Art, must you be so melodramatic?

     Apologies for our resident Neanderthal's tendency to exaggerate.  What I meant is, Pluto no longer has the status of a planet, even if the definition of "A Planet" is surprisingly difficult to nail down.  Pluto comes under the heading of a "Planetismal" which you can render in South Canadian argot as "Planet-lite" or in Perfidious Albion's vernacular, "Planetidgy".
     Here's the thing.  Pluto is a frighteningly long way off, at what we consider the limits of the Solar System, which has meant very little was known about it for decades.  There is only so much magnification a telescope can provide, after all.  Art?

Spot Pluto

     If all you have to go on is a small white blob, there's not a lot to say.  Sir Patrick Moore, one of the Truly Great Englishmen, tellingly described Pluto as "dead" back in the Fifties, and he had every reason to believe this.
     However.  Sir Pat made his quote in 1955, before Sputnik had even lofted.  We now have robotic probes that can, in real life, perform what would have been described as "science fiction" in 1955.*
     I have more to say on this subject, but don't want to bore you - BOOJUM! stays on-topic with all the regularity of a flea on a griddle ten yards across - so I shall end this particular post with a more recent photograph of Pluto than Clyde's above.  Art?

There you go

BOOJUM! Reviews Films
As we are wont to do, all your humble scribe bothers to do is take a quick squint at a poster on the side of a (late) First Bus as it hurries dawdles by, and makes it up from there.  If you want a proper film review, then you are on the wrong continent entirely.  Go chase up that Kermode chap, he's quite good.**

"Hereditary": Hmmm.  Well now.  I judge from the colour palette alone that this is going to be sombre in tone, and - Hay Pesto!  - what do we have but an allusion to another film, that horror one which used Mike Oldfield's 'Tubular Bells' to effect.  I shan't tell you which one because THAT WOULD BE PLAYING RIGHT INTO THEIR HANDS! and we can't have that.  Conrad is always highly suspicious of films that try to foster an audience by comparing themselves to another film.  Treat with wariness.

Now this - this film is a horror

"Show Dogs": Really?  That's it?  What is this, a 90 minute orgy of nothing but clips of dogs being cute or naughty or both?  I have a dog of my own who provides such entertainment for free, thank you very much.

And here she is.  The proximity of food and dog is closely related

"Solo": Again I have to quibble and query.  In my lexicography, "solo" means "alone".  You know, one of.  Singular.  Why, I count at least three people on this poster on first examination alone <sighs> really, these people are perfectly capable of counting out their millions; why can't they apply the same intellect -
     - sorry?  What's that?
     Oh it's character.  I see.  
     You spoiled my rant.   Go very far away very quickly!

I didn't count the Wookie.
(I'm so bad)

You What?
Some people, it seems, have more money than sense and less sense than tents, for Lo! what did I discover on Facebook but a very worrying advert.  Art?

     This thing is put across as an "inflatable tent" which allows the purchaser to "camp out in the water".  
     There are just one or two issues that your humble scribe has with it, however.
     Firstly, there's no mention or sign of an anchor.  So, you float your tent out onto the river at night - which I admit is an excellent way to avoid the zombie hordes - in the quiet waters of a placid stream, and wake at midnight, as you buck a set of deadly whitewater rapids ...
     Secondly, there's no mention or sign of nor positions for anything like oars.  So, if you survive the night, how do you get back to shore?  "A healthy morning swim comes as standard" is not what I'd expect to hear.
     Then there's the price.  £937 for a raft with a roof?  Water joke.***




*  Some traditionalists would have said "witchcraft" and insisted NASA be purged with fire.
**  And is also a big fan of the Comsat Angels, which will keep him out of the uranium mines when I take over.
***  Aaand that's the "bad pun" part of our Facebook description done.