A French Land-Travelling Torpedo

Yes, I Know What You're Thinking -
 - and - er - why no officer, this strange helmet in no way resembles DARPA's prototype Telepathy Helmet that mysteriously went missing a couple of months ago -

A police sketch

     Ahem.  Yes, you are thinking "Dog Buns!  It's a bit early in the evening for the Old Fat Man to have been at either 1) Peyote 2) Peculiar cigarettes or 3) A litre of gin, ain't it?  For surely he is merely stringing words together at random?"
     Leaving aside the fact that my frame is at it's ideal 15 stone weight, allow me to -
     
     CHANGE THE SUBJECT COMPLETELY!

     Don't whinge so, this is useful mental training, and if you ever expected BOOJUM! to stay on-track then O Boy! you are not merely in the wrong tent and the wrong desert, you are indeed on the wrong continent.*  
     "Kokuszdio" is what we finished today's earlier post on, and I never explained what this was, though the astute or Magyar amongst you would have known: it is Hungarian for "Coconuts".

The twin cities of Buda and Pest

     For the unaware, the Hungarian language - Magyar - is one of the Finno-Ugric family, having vague linguistic connections with the Finns - whose name for themselves is "Suomi" - and genetic connections to the Far East, from where their conquering Mongol ancestors came.  If you hear it being spoken, it sounds like a strange combination of French and German, and the only Hungarian words most Westerners know are "Goulash" and "Paprika".  To which you can add "Fo Utca", which means "High Street".

Andorra, greatest elevation in Europe and thus - has the highest street.

     Blimey.  I only meant to say "Coconuts".  I do go on rather, don't I?
     Right!  The tide is coming in, so I need to go see if the motley has managed to dig itself out of that submerged coffin long steel box.

About That Title -
I was neither joking nor inebriated nor high - how dare you!  Of COURSE people can tell the difference!** - when I typed it, as I was obviously referring to the Schneider Crocodile, which our resident pictorial expert Art can illustrate -

Art, those are ALLIGATORS
<sounds of sighs and a Tazer being charged up>

     Please talk quietly amongst yourselves whilst Art stops spasming.  Stop whining, Art - put some salve on it.  Are we ready now?

Hey Pesto!

     I'd never heard of these things before last week, when I went back and perused my Osprey "French Tanks of WW1", where they are mentioned in passing.  They were another attempt to break the deadlock of trenches and barbed wire on the Western Front during the First Unpleasantness, invented by the M8s in 1915, the year before TANK.  Their title in M8 was "Torpille Terrestre" or - ba-dum-ching - "Land torpedo" and they were a novel concept.  As a small tracked vehicle they were able to surmount the rough terrain of No Man's Land, being directed by remote control via wire, and carrying a 90 lb charge of high explosive.  Once into the Teuton's barbed wire, they would be detonated, removing themselves and the wire from the planet.

The stayer of nations

     Or such was the plan.
     These machines are, to say the least, obscure.  The photo above is the only one I can find, and there is precious little information about them, bar the damning detail in my Osprey, which stated that they were far too unreliable to be put into production.  Okay, 10/10 for idea, 2/10 for reality.  Try harder, M8s!

More Of Matters Military
If you thought this blog would be all about underage children taking drugs (Lewis Carroll we are looking at YOU!) and falling down rabbit holes whilst conversing with sentient playing cards, then - see that crack above about wrong desert.
     Let me just bamboozle Art a little - Art?  If you stop sulking I'll send you a Playboy photo of Mara Corday*** -

     This is an autobiographical memoir of the mid to late 1918, written by an artillery officer, who arrived back with his gunner mates from sick leave just in time to face the enormous Teuton offensive of 22nd March 1918.  Full of fascinating incidental details that really bring to life what a gunners daily term involved.  At least if you're into that sort of thing, which I am; others might find it an impenetrable bore and be instantly adrift, not knowing what a "4.5 how" was. Art?

"Enemy, Killing, For The Use Of"
(A 4.5" howitzer)

Finally -
A moment's grateful silence for the Forsvarets SpesialKommando Jegertroppen, those valiant ladies of the Norwegian Special Forces, who help to keep our oil rigs safe at night.

No gun puns, please.

     Why, I bet if they'd been around in 1975, those b****y Zygons would never have dared make a move on the Ekofisk fields!

Yeah.  B****y pizza-complexioned creeps!

*  Possibly the wrong planet.
**  Er - they can, can't they?
***  Don't fret, she keeps her clothes on.  But Art doesn't know that.

The Enormous Dwarf

It's All Relative
Also, I can tell what you're thinking: "How can a dwarf be enormous?  Surely -"
     I would refer you to "The Phantom Tollbooth", where our hero Milo encounters a perfectly normal sized man, who claims that he is either "The World's Smallest Giant" or "The World's Tallest Dwarf" - it's all relative.

That's a Watchdog.*

     And so we come to that interesting astronomical phenomenon, the Brown Dwarf, which is a body with at least 13 times the mass of Jupiter, up to an estimated 80 times the mass of Jupiter (usually handily abbreviated to 'MJ' by astronomers).  This means it is just slightly under the limit for generating internal nuclear fusion and becoming a star - a Kim Cardassian as opposed to a David Bowie, if you like.
     I introduced brown dwarfs yesterday, because Phil Plait the Bad Astronomer has an interesting article on a prospective BD in his column.

https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/an-aurora-glows-over-a-possible-rogue-planet

     This is something whizzing about in space beyond the limits of your our Solar System, all on it's lonesome.  It may be a BD, with a planet orbiting around it, or - gasp! - even a planet with a moon orbiting it.  Doubtless time and more, better-refined observations will reveal what it is, and maybe how it got there.     Of course, all the "Planet X" swivel-eyed loons will now jump up and down shrieking "I told you so!" hard enough to make their lithium pills rattle.

An artist had an impression -

     Brown dwarfs.  Proof of the saying "The universe is not only stranger than we can imagine, but so are people."  Or something.     Come on, motley, I told you - the only antidote to an overdose of mugwort is to eat a bucket of raw whelks!

An "Egad!" Moment
This is really bathos in every sense - going from the galactic wonder of a sub-star to that staple of social media - "What I Had To Eat Part 18,5347", with the proviso that, because it's me posting this, you ought to at least pretend an interest.  Art?

"Epoisses"

     I challenge you to tell me what this is - AND NO GOOGLING!  Conrad bought it because it was only 50p (or about 32c in that peculiar South Canadian currency) and he is a miserly glutton.  What was it?  No idea.
     When the box was opened and the secret revealed, it turned out to be a soft cheese, carefully wrapped in airtight plastic -
     This was an "Egad!" moment, as the wrapping promised that this was going to be a spectacularly stinking bit of fromage, meaning I had to wait until Wonder Wifey and her intensely acute sense of smell were out of the house.
     Surprise!  Not only does it barely smell (although I am not 100% sure of this as I only have 1% of a normal Hom. Sap's nasal acuity), it's a nice mild very soft cheese.  Art?

Et voila.

     And because posting pictures of your meals is horribly sad, here's our fall-back to regain a little of our somewhat tarnished credibility - that is, atom-bombing the Moon.

Ha!  TAKE THAT, MOON!

     Hang on - let me just check the Obituaries - ah, it was just a ghastly rumour and Ben Folds is very much alive, it was only a misheard remark about his heart being ignited -**

Remember What I Said Above About People?
Conrad, being the terrible person that we all know him to be, was chortling himself sick over the Have Your Say comments on the Beeb website yesteryon.  Apparently some ballfoot player is injured and out of play for 6 weeks or so, and there was an article about this, together with photos.  The Beeb - wisely or not - opened Comments on the page.  First we need to add a photo they posted.  Art?

Cute dog!

     We shall briefly touch on the ballfoot game here, so don't go to sleep.  Most of the comments were along the lines of "His performance has been so shockingly bad that nobody will notice he's missing", along with a few that said "He likes dogs so he can't be all bad", and the carpers who wondered "How this is news and why did it merit a HYS and what idiots people were for posting on it - oh hang on a minute -"
     However, a significant number of posts, easily in the dozens and dozens, were all along the lines of "OMG TWO PHOTOS THAT ARE EXACTLY THE SAME HOW STRANGE WHAT A WIERDO!!!" 
     Yes indeedy, check out the framed photos.

Thank You, Steve, Thank You SO MUCH!
That was irony, lest it pass you by.  Steve is my memory, you see, and a most annoying character, too, at times.
   Here's the problem.  Art?

Generic Mad Scientist

       I remember a comic strip from an annual which might have been "Eagle" (I think - Steve being lazy again) that had some terrible pun about "FEAR" in the title, because it was set in the "Somethingsomething FEderation for Advanced Research" and it usually had a sinister or spooky theme.  The head scientist had a metal claw for a hand and a weird metal band that covered half his face and all of his nose.  The trouble is, I can't remember the correct title for this strip, nor the mad differently-sane scientist, though I suspect the artist, if not actually Eric Bradbury, was of that ilk.

<sighing> Steve, Steve, what are we going to do with you?

     It might have been "TV21" because, in what is either sad or determined, I've tracked down lists of Eagle strips and artists and comics and not found the story.
     B****y Steve!

Finally - 
Before going on

     
     "OMG! TWO PHOTOS THAT ARE EXACTLY THE SAME HOW STRANGE WHAT A WIERDO!!!"

     I wear my badge with pride.

     Kókuszdió!

* No, really, it's in the book, honest, I didn't make it up.
**  Racy stuff, eh?