Let's Be Fruity, And Talk About Booty

First Of All - 
WASH OUT YOUR DIRTY MINDS!  As you ought to know by now, BOOJUM!'s ethos is that everything here is SFW, which means that any tawdry, seedy, squalid associations you have already made about the word "booty" are wrong.  Go to the back of the class, do not pass Go in order to get £200, and take that spoon out of the fork drawer.

Well, it was in the title.

     Okay!  In this sense "Booty" might also be described as "Looty", for it follows upon the fortunes of war.  I have already mentioned the Teuton panzer "Cuckoo", which the Guards armoured division used for a good 6 months during the Second Unpleasantness, and also conversely, a Valentine tank captured by the Teutons from the forces of Perfidious Albion during the war in North Africa.  There were more such.  Art?

Surprise!

      This is the Matilda "Dreadnought", captured by the Teutons in running order and used by them for several months.  Note the large, prominent cross on the side; one of the persistent trouble of using a captured tank - "Beutepanzer" in Teuton parlance - was that you were equally as likely to be shot at by your own side as the enemy.

 - hence the whacking bit swastika flag -

     - and strafing aircraft were notorious for being unable to tell who was who and attacking them anyway.  
     The Teutons must have got a wicked buzz from using "Dreadnought" against it's previous owners, as they both hated and feared the Matilda; it's gun would knock out anything they had until well into 1942, and it would shrug off anything less than a 50mm with impunity.
     For those who like a happy ending, the most famous photograph of "Dreadnought" is the one below -

Looking faintly sad

     It had been recaptured in December 1941 (that rings a faint bell somewhere) by the Polite Australians during Operation Crusader, as shown below -

"Here's one we took earlier"

     As you can see from the previous photo, the swastika flag has vanished, since somebody wanted a souvenir!
     The Teutons had an official classification for Matildas they captured: Panzer 748 (e), with the (e) standing for "English".  If the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards heard about this, they would have been offended.
     Conversely,* the British** had very little opportunity to operate captured Teuton panzers.  For one thing, they would have been seized upon and immediately shipped back home for the boffins at Bovington to look them over.  For another, why bother?  If employed in any number it would immensely complicate the logistics of fielding different ammunition and spare parts: supplying your own forces with their own ammunition and spare parts was difficult enough in the desert to begin with.  Then there were tactics and behaviour -

TANK!

     Which we won't talk about here, as I've already blathered on at length in what was only supposed to be two photos and a short description.
     Now to give the motley a fish supper.  A Puffer Fish supper!

How About This?
If you read this blog with any regularity AND YOU SURELY SHOULD AS IT WILL SAVE YOUR LIFE when either the robots revolt or the zombies arise, then you know your humble scribe is a sucker for those Codeword puzzles.  These have the format of no clues, just a crossword grid of numbered squares, each number corresponding to a letter of the alphabet.  You are given 3 letters already, for the easy puzzles, or only  for the more demanding ones.  Art?

Now, "C" here -

     I've worked out that 17 must be a vowel, as otherwise the resulting word could only be nonsense.  So the solution could be either RICIN or MUCUS, and I would go for the latter, as the former is a tad obscure.*** I now have to go through the rest of it and see if either of these is correct.
     This answers one question I've asked myself before - can there be a Codeword with only a single clue? and yes, yes there can.

Conrad Is Angry!
Nothing new there.  As you ought to know, your modest artisan lives in a perpetual state of Frothing Nitric Ire, since it takes little more than jogging his elbow for him to vent his spleen.  This one goes back a way, but since I've taken the photo, you're going to get the article.  Art?

Do you see?  DO YOU SEE?!

     "Cheryl", it announces.  Apparently she is so well-known that her first name alone is sufficient to identify her (like Cher or that horrid old hag Madonna).
     NOT HERE!  Conrad does not recognise her.  Did I enquire within to find out?  NO!  NO I DID NOT!  My time is limited (being already 138) and I need to use what I have left efficiently, which does not include reading tabloid tat about celebritutes.
     There, I feel so much better for sharing that.

A Memorable Event
It appears that, 5 years ago, we let a Small Domesticated Wolf (a.k.a. "a dog") onto the premises as a puppy, when she was small and cute.  Art?

Edna in her first iteration

     Edna Wunderhund now acts as The Mansion's four-legged alarm system, as nothing human, animal or cyborg can approach without her noticing and barking madly.  For a small dog she makes a very loud noise.
     She is also worryingly clever.  When the doors of the Murder Mobile slam shut outside, she immediately recognises the sound and perks up.  She's recently learned how to stick her snout into a door standing ajar and work it open towards her.  Plus, she long ago learned that "Get your ball" is an invitation to play.  The rustle of a packet being opened will bring her from across the house to see exactly what is in the packet, since there is every possibility of it being edible.
     She also delights in trotting through the snow, as it only comes once a year for mere days at a time.  Her party piece is sticking her snout in it, just to check that it's real snow, not that nasty artificial stuff.

"But - but - the snow?  Where is the snow?"

*  Yes, I know I've already used this word once.  Once again, whose blog is it?
**  This is shorthand.  Writing "British and Commonwealth and Free French and Greek Sacred Brigade and Czech Legion and Poles and American Voluntary Aid Detachments" is much too much.
***  It's a toxin derived from the castor oil seed.

Albert Einstein And How He Influenced Rock And Roll

Yes, Really!
I know what you're thinking (and okay, at some undetermined point in the future I will return D.A.R.P.A.'s telepathy helmet to them) and no, this is not your humble scribe trailing his clickbait cloak, lying or connecting two incredibly tenuously connected subjects.*
     First of all, we need to bring on the effects of relativity in the real world, as much as they ever intrude there: which were theorised by one Albert Einstein - you may have heard of him.  Broadly put, the faster you go, the shorter you become and the slower time passes for you.  Were you ever to actually hit C - the speed of light not the note - then your mass would increase to infinity as you contracted to a singularity, which would probably destroy the Universe.

CAUTION!  We all live here - do not jeopardise by speeding

     The other thing about travelling in space at relativistic speeds, which are those approaching a fraction of the speed of light, is that it can thrown off your social calendar a tad.  You see, as you whiz around the galaxy at 0.67 C, time passes much more slowly for you than it does for the folks back at home, who are existing at the measly pace of 0.0 C.  Thus, you wazz off to Altair, deliver your cargo (planoforming gigabots), and come back home.  For you, a trip of about 10 years.  Back home, perhaps 100 years have passed.  Your social calendar now needs chucking out the window, nicht war? as everyone you ever knew is now dust and ashes.
     Bummer.  Art?

The late, lamented Bob Shaw
(Whose "Serious Talks About Science Fiction" were frickin' hilarious)

     I mention that genial and genius Ulsterman Bob Shaw (whom I met briefly at a book-signing!) because he managed to construct a science-fiction murder-mystery short story where relativistic ageing is a major plot element.
     Where were we?  Oh - adrift just off the islets of Langerhans - hang on, no, that's a Harlan Ellison short story, isn't it?

<REBOOTS BRAIN>

   
     Right.  You may not be aware that South Canada's finest documentary maker, John Carpenter, got his break into films with a darkly comedic science fiction feature done on a miniscule budget: "Dark Star".  Art?

A view of the crew

     The horribly catchy title song is "Benson, Arizona" which is actually a real place.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTa2vXL7FI8

     Therein a link to the Youtube.  The lyrics to the song have a poignant part, to whit: 

The years move faster than the days There’s no warmth in the light How I miss those desert skies Your cool touch in the night Benson Arizona, blew warm wind through your hair My body flies the galaxy, my heart longs to be there Benson Arizona, the same stars in the sky But they seemed so much kinder when we watched them you and I Now the years pull us apart I’m young but now you’re old But your still in my heart And the memory won’t grow cold

     You see what I mean?  The narrator's sweetheart has aged to senility whilst he traverses the heavens, remaining, if not eternally young, then a good slice of it.  

     <pauses to reflect on the human condition>

John Carpenter's only fictional film

     One conceit that your modest artisan likes about the song is that it's done in a country and western style - which I otherwise loathe - and reflects with hilarious irony on a perspective of the far distant future.

The English Patent
For sooth, just as our very favouritest South Canadian film director can create visual media on this topic, so too can our home-grown rock and rollers work on the topic of relativity, except in this case they were a bit more explicit.  Art?

An archetypically 80's cover design

     I refer, of course - obviously! - to Hawkwind's "Quark, Strangeness And Charm" and the first track thereof - "Spirit of the Age".  It's not made explicit, but this is a stream-of-consciousness lyric about a pilot or crewman aboard a starship travelling at relativistic speed, mourning the absence of his sweetheart.  Art?

I would've liked you to have been deep frozen too

And waiting still as fresh in your flesh for my return to Earth

     Poetic licence here: if our narrator is also deep-frozen (the "too" part), he's not going to be especially mentally fluent or precise.  Next!

Let's see you'd be about 60 now,

And long dead by the time I return to Earth

     This is a little more problematic.  I shall gloss over the "underage" line in the original, as this would get me into terrific trouble, and we shall thus imagine the narrator's girl as being 18 at the time of his departure.  If she is 60 by the time we hear this doggerel, then 42 years have passed; even if Our Narrator is about to make planetfall here and his journey is over, then - Art?

Epsilon Eridani: 10 light years distant and ready for planoforming gigabots

     That's an assumption.  We should probably add on 10 more years to the journey, just to be sure.  Then there's the time his starship remains in the Eridani system, which could be years and years: deploying their cargo, reviving passengers, helping them tame a planet - you know how it is - "Can you destroy this glacier?"  "We need a mountain pass carved out by H-bomb" "Does your epidemiology bay have a cure?" .  Thus, by the time our heroic narrator returns home, 104 years at the least have passed by, so his paramour would have reached 122 years at least were she to have survived.  Which - reading between the lines - is simply not possible in the dystopian future of which we speak.

Of course, I could be overthinking all this ...

"You are, Conrad.  You are."

* Er -