Hack, Slash And Balderdash!

I Realise I Am Going To Have To Explain Some Etymology

That's the study of word's sources and origins, NOT the study of insects and other creepy-crawlies.

Jeff Goldblum gets into character

     Okay: "Balderdash".  You and I know that this means "A load of old rubbish", although people not hailing from This Sceptred Isle might not have known that.  BOOJUM! - educating you one factoid at a time!  Where does it come from?  Well, do you know, my Collins Concise doesn't know.  Fortunately my "Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable" is more up to speed: the phrase emerges from the sixteenth century and means "Frothy water" (NOT beer!).  Art!

     Which language it comes from is, again, uncertain, with Danish and Icelandic (!) being possible contenders.  My favourite is the Welsh "Baldorddus", which means "noisy".

      ANYWAY we are referring back to "Le Mort D'Arthur" and the trials and tribulations of Sir Percivale, whom we last left stranded in the wilderness, without a horse (he had been riding a demon steed, which had galloped into a nearby river)*.  Yes, he still has his armour and sword and spear, but you can't eat them in a pinch, can you?

     Then along comes a giant serpent, carrying a lion cub -

     Excuse me?  Did that demon horse grow a pair of jet engines and transport them to Africa?  Art!

Sir Per carves a fresh joint

     Here is where I call 'balderdash' on Sir Thomas Malory, because the Anaconda and Panthera Leo are NOT (we've been using that word a lot today, haven't we?) native to This Sceptred Isle.  Actually that should be a Boa, Anacondas are found in South America -

     ANYWAY the lion cub either has a very tough hide or the serpent carried it amidst it's coils, for it romps away unhurt, much to the delight of Dad, who fawns upon Sir Per.  No, it doesn't eat him; if it was hungry there's a huge dead snake lying there, which is much easier to tackle than a man wearing a tin can.

     Matey isn't out of the woods yet - not that there's much timber in this barren wasteland, so one wonders what Lion and Serpent live on - for Gosh! here's a ship ALL CLAD IN BLACK approaching from the sea, and here's a beautiful lady aboard said ship, also ALL CLAD IN BLACK.  Sir Per is a tad naieve and unworldly, you know, which Sir Tom claims to be splendid attributes, whereas Conrad under these circumstances would be hearing DANGER WILL ROBINSON!

Another Tin Can Man**

     Conrad will leave things here on a cliffhanger, in order to keep you in suspense.  Motley, I've got you a tub of coal-flavoured ice-cream, if you're interested?

Hey!  That's MY Job!

I have recently been posting Facebook entries from years and years ago, which usually have a bad visual pun incorporated.  I wonder - can we replicate one such, Art?

     This one is about Your Humble Scribe being thoughtful, or <mild groan> "pensive".

     ANYWAY you may remember, unless you are a literate goldfish, that I was banging on yesteryon about a comic strip from 2000AD called "The A.B.C. Warriors", whose leader was 'Hammerstein.'  Art?

The Robot With Two Heads

     Now, Hammerstein and another robot were actually imports (or survivors) from another comic that had gone toes-up whilst 2000AD was positively thriving: "Starlord".  So 2000AD absorbed the other title, which allowed it to keep a couple of strips that had run in the other comic, "Strontium Dog" being one, the other one being "Robusters", who were a robot disaster team.  Art!

Terrific Dave Gibbons cover art

     That other robot's name?  'Ro-Jaws'.  Art!

     He was a rude, crude sewer-cleaning droid and creator Pat Mills must have laughed himself sick at their daft pairing:  'Ro-Jaws and Hammerstein".

     Your Honour, I rest my case***.

One To Conjure With

No!  Nothing to do with Harry Potter.  Conrad spotted an interesting photo on the BBC website earlier this morning and would like to share it with you.  Art!

     Hmmmmmm.  Seeing a Teuton plane in slate-grey, bearing a Maltese cross, and with the name 'Luftwaffe', does bring back memories of the First and Second Unpleasantnesses.  This mission, if you can read the small print, is one of purely humanitarian intent, as it brings medical supplies and personnel to Portugal in order to help batter Covid-19 into submission, or at least remission.

     HOWEVER!

     Because the world is full of bampots, and there is no known cure for transmissible stupidity, in a few years this picture is going to be trotted out by the swivel-eyed loonwaffles as "Evidence the Germans are taking over!  The MSM refuse to cover it!  Wake up sheeple!" until their meds kick in.

Immune to vaccine or common-sense

     So remember, gentle reader, you saw it here and Conrad called it first.  Any donations gratefully received.

"Vapourware"

Somewhat to my surprise, I only came across this term on Tuesday, even though it has been floating around since the mid-Eighties.  It cropped up as a word in one of the links at the end of an article about "The Dig", and you know Conrad; curiosity is his besetting sin.  Art!

     The term is usually applied to computer hardware or software, although it has bled over into other fields.  It refers to products that either arrive late or not at all, in the latter case because they never existed in the first place.  Typically they are promoted to jam a spanner in the gears of competitor's products, as in the case of the IBM machine above, which only came off the production lines three years after it was announced in a blaze of publicity.  Conrad would call this less "Vapourware" and more "Fraud".  Wikipedia mentions a case of outright fraud: the "office suite" that Ovation demonstrated to the technical press in 1983.

     The only problem was that no such thing existed; they had tried to use the demonstration to scam more investors, and failed.  Unsurprisingly they went bankrupt.  How did they not get sentenced to serious jail time?  Conrad not impressed.  Not entirely surprised, either.  Greed and stupidity two of Hom.

Saps defining features!

     Whoops, not sure what happened there.  Is the line-formatting gone to the dogs again?  Time, methinks, to cut and run.  Goodbye, Vulnavia!

"But - but - don't I get a mention?"

*  It's a long story.

**  I made this one up all by myself.  Aren't I clever!

***  It's lined with lead.

The Meknificent Seven

I Warned You!

You could say that today's post is an example of how "N.B.C." became "A.B.C.", whilst having nothing at all to do with South Canadian television stations. For today we are going to look at one of 2000AD's older series, because they used to occasionally promote it with today's title.  Ladies, gentlemen and those unsure, I give you - the A.B.C Warriors!  Art?

     Here let us jump from the year 2000 - because the ABCs came out in 1979, when 2000 was the far future - back to ooooh 1975, at the height of the Cold War*.  Back then, Vulnavia, we had weapons classed as "Nuclear, Bacterial and Chemical" hence the abbreviation N.B.C.  Things like the W33 nuclear artillery shell, weaponised botulinus toxin and, of course, nerve gas.  You may shudder in relief that things never kicked off in Europe, given the cocktail of death above.

SO much bang for your buck.

     It was the Sinisters, and their lackeys in the Warsaw Pact, who described these things as "Weapons of Mass Destruction", and Your Humble Scribe is baffled why we use their description when they lost.
     ANYWAY the Warriors came with a nice mnemonic "A.B.C.", because creator Pat Mills liked symmetry like that.  "Atomic, Bacterial and Chemical" because these chaps were robots, you see, who were utterly unphased by germ warfare, gasses or radiation, and thus proof against them.  Possibly not a nuke if they sat atop it when it popped, and Conrad posits that they must have specially hardened electronics to avoid electro-magnetic pulse damage -

Artwork by Dave Gibbons
(You see, he did more than just "Watchmen")

     From left to right they are: Joe Pineapples (because pineapples are the Devil's fruit), Happy Shrapnel, Deadlock, Hammerstein, Mongrol, The Mess (in a canister on Mongrol's shoulder) and Blacklock.
     My intention originally was to describe each character with a picture, which would probably have taken up the entire blog for today, so Conrad thinks we'll leave it there for today.  Oh, and if anyone here dares admit to seeing the 1995 version of "Judge Dredd" <winces> then Hammerstein makes a brief appearance, for no good reason other than he looks cool.  Art!

His gizzards look a bit exposed for a combat robot

     Motley, did you know that ABC Television here in This Sceptred Isle were responsible for "Callan"?

Everything is connected to everything else

"We Have Ways"

Yesteryon I was describing how Jim ("James Holland" to his mum) and Al ("Big Hairy Git" to his mum) were chatting about Jim's recently-acquired 'Pixie suit', which was 1954 vintage but which looked completely unchanged from the version as used by Perfidious Albion's tank crews in North-West Europe, from 1944 to 1945.  Jim then went on to describe the leather jerkin as also used by whomsoever in the British army could lay their hands upon one, for it was a coveted piece of kit.  Art!

     This photo is so good it must have been staged; here we see Highland troops (you can tell by the Tam-o-shanters they are wearing) clad cosily in leather jerkins.  This section also sports Lee-Enfield rifles, a Sten submachine gun (slung over the back of chap to starboard), a Bren light machine-gun at centre, and that piece of pipe is actually a P.I.A.T anti-tank weapon.

     The jerkin kept your torso warm, as it was lined with fleece, and because it lacked sleeves, you can move your arms around freely, as Jim explained (he has an original one) and pointed out if you're throwing grenades or digging a slit trench or raising a rifle, you need to be able to raise arms with rapidity.

Obviously up to no good

     Al was certainly interested in this piece of apparel, but also said he would probably have to purchase a modern replica, as arriving back at home with a piece of "Stinky, wrinkly" clothing that he " - only paid £400 for" would not sit very well.  To Jim's resigned statement that his was beginning to show signs of wear, a Twitter commentator explained that working vaseline into the leather helped to both preserve and waterproof it.

You Think You're Having A Bad Day

Think again, gentle reader!  For Lo! we are back on "Le Mort D'Arthur" and the mystical bent continues, with Book Fourteen focussing on the hapless Sir Percivale, who is someone to emulate thanks to his being a virgin, and thus pure and unsullied and unwordly, unlike wicked Sir Launcelot**.

     It seems the forces of darkness have it in for Sir Per, because after having lost his own horse, he is 'given' one by a random lady at the roadside.  This black beast then takes off across the landscape at several hundred miles per hour, until it is about to cross a river in spate. Art!

     Feeling in mortal peril, Sir Per crosses himself, which instantly causes the demon horse to throw him off (Christian affirmation like this thwarts demonic plans every time) and hurl itself into the raging torrent.  Nowadays he'd probably be charged and fined for animal abuse ...
     So, now Sir Per is alone, unmounted, in a barren wilderness, without any succour or the means to get any.  At least this is the Pond Of Eden, he's not going to die from dehydration!

     We shall come back to the unlucky Sir Per.

Definitely done for animal abuse

"Dudgeon"

Not a word one encounters very often in the modern world.  Conrad sat there, pondering on Sir Per's fate, thinking that the man would be absolutely entitled to sit there in a state of 'high dudgeon', given all the unlikely things he has suffered.  Yes yes yes - but where does it come from?

     There's the thing; neither my Collins Concise nor teh interwebz can come up with a source, beyond saying that it arrived in English in the late 15th Century.  Nor is there anything in my Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable.  I confess myself stumped.  O well, let's just use "enraged", "cantankerous" and "Frothing Nitric Ire" instead.  I think those three cover all bases.

     Leaving you in a state of low to middling dudgeon, I can tell you that we are done!  Done done done!

* Tsar Putin's favourite year

**  Sir L was having it away with Queen Guenevere, after all.

The Magnificent Severn

No!  We Are Not Talking About A Film With A Mis-Spelled Title!

And the only reason you're not a thin haze of rapidly-cooling plasma is because my Remote Nuclear Detonator is off-line for repairs (hint: do not hit the button in a paroxysm of rage as it is delicate and prone to breakage).

     Okay, I have established what we're not talking about, even though I did mention them yesterday.  I can change my mind if I feel like it, and once again, whose blog is it?

     For today we celebrate the beautiful and majestic River Severn, which - Art! Less coal more goal!

Picturesque as owt

      - you see above.  It is spanned by not one but TWO mighty bridges, which if Art can put down his bowl of coal -

Told you.  Mighty.

     They have to be mighty to cross the majestic, not to say magnificent, Severn.  There is also another one that people swoon over, which is thanks to it's history, not it's mightiness, as you can see from the below.  Art!

The Iron Bridge at - er - Ironbridge

     This was the first bridge in the world to be made out of iron, cast in a new process that produced larger and purer quantities then before.  Designed and built in 1780, it has a single span because the Severn at this point was prone to flooding.  Somewhat ironically it went out of use for vehicular traffic in the Thirties as both sides of the river gorge are moving slowly towards each other.  In another 150,000 years they won't even need a bridge!
     We seem to have gotten slightly off-topic here.  Art!  More Severn!

With puny human for scale

     It is also one of the few rivers that can bore and still be interesting, if not magnificent, because in the picture above you can see the Severn Bore.  This is a phenomenon that occurs when the incoming tide (for the Severn is an estuarine river, as well as magnificent) heads into narrower and narrower reaches of the river, going from a width of five miles to a few hundred yards, that are also progressively shallower.
     There we are.  I think I've sucked all the possible humour out of that particular subject*.  Let us proceed.
     Motley!  Shall we go Shark-Surfing?

How it's done

When Is It Payday?

<sighs heavily> Conrad, out of a spirit of inquiry, decided to re-read "Monty's Men" by Professor John Buckley, a tome he purchased last summer.  This can be regarded as a broader and more in-depth companion to the same author's  "British Armour In The Normandy Campaign", since it covers the whole campaign fought by the British Liberation Army from the preparation for D-Day to the final Teuton surrender at Luneberg Heath.

     "Yes yes yes," I hear you quibble.  "Get on with it, do, because "Wolf Hall" is on shortly."

     Pausing only to note that Your Humble Scribe is impressed with your improvement in taste, I shall explicate.  This time round I am making sure to refer to the Notes, of which there are many; so many, in fact, that I have a second bookmark at the back of the book to make checking easier.

     O dear.  There are so many, many books there that I don't have <wallet squeaks in fear> and feel that I would like want need.  Hence this item's title.

Ol' John expounding in his natural environment

  
"The Dig"

'Fraid so, Gwynnie Paltrow.  Now, I expect you to nod sagely, such your teeth and comment on Ralph Fiennes accent, how realistic the mud and rain was and -

     WRONG!

     For Conrad is nothing if not Mephistopholean ("sneaky") as you ought to well know by now, and yes that's another word you never expected to read when you rolled out of bed this morning.  The film triggered memories of a book I read loooong ago, and if Art has finished sucking out the insides of those fuel rods -

     I got it cheap from a charity shop is my excuse, probably without realising that it was the novelisation - if such a thing is possible - of a computer game.  It was written by Alan Dean Foster, who probably had rent to pay and needed food on the table, and do you know - I cannot remember a single thing about it, except there was something about fitting lids into holes underground.  Which is probably a direct reference to the game, which Conrad has never played and doesn't feel culturally poor for not doing so.

Can you <ahem> dig it?

"We Have Ways"

Yes, that podcast featuring Al and Jim, those rascally scamps, comedian and historian respectively.  Tonight's broadcast actually mentioned "Monty's Men" - no Coincidence Hydra involved this time, Jim had posted a Tweet last night that had me looking for it again - and Jim was saying he had at last obtained a "Pixie Suit".

Art! <sounds of Tazer>

     NO!  WRONG!  AS WRONG AS WRONG CAN GET! 

     A "Pixie Suit" was an insulated overall worn by the tank crews of Perfidious Albion in the latter years of the Second Unpleasantness, noted for it's warmth and much coveted by envious South Canadian officers in the infantry serving alongside the British.  On one occasion Colonel Cristopherson of the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry was able to placate a fiery South Canadian major, after his men having suffered friendly fire, by presenting him with a pixie suit.  Art!

     As you can see, once you put on your goggles and scrim scarf, there was no way for the treacherous elements to get to you.  Ha - take that, wind and rain!  The name, I believe, comes from the suit's resemblance to an item of infant apparel.

Finally -

DOG BUNS!  DON'T THEY REALISE THIS IS THE THIN END OF THE WEDGE! <pauses to allow the red mist to recede and temple veins to cease throbbing>

     "What?  What?  A journalist used TWO spaces after a full-stop before capitalising?" I hear you snigger.

     This is no joke.  THIS IS HOW YOU GET SKYNET!!**  Art?

"Robot dog Spot skips, cleans and does gardening"

     Yeah, yeah, laugh and mock if you will, just wait and see.  Remember James Cameron's frightening documentary "The Abyss" and that quote " - it went straight for the warhead, and they think it's cute."  Remember my prophetic words when an army of rogue AI-driven cyberdogs equipped with miniguns takes over***.

*  Provisionally.  Never say never and all that.

**  I feel two exclamation marks are merited by the seriousness of the subject.

***  Or - put your faith in Catman.

A Long Shot

Okay, You Need Some Film Knowledge Here

Waaaaaay back in the dim and distant past, before there was an internet, before there was even a D.A.R.P.A., they made films on celluloid.  This was a stable version far less dangerous than the old (really old) nitro-cellulose, which was horribly unsafe and liable to explode if so much as a spark came into contact with it -

     

     Which, of course - obviously! - has nothing to do with what I wanted to talk about.  Okay, we are looking at 1960 and a film called "The Magnificent Seven", which was actually Hollywood's adaptation of a classic Japanese film "The Seven Samurai".  Crikey.  A film older than I am.  Have we all got that?  Splendid!

     Let us now jump back in time even further, because - yes, yes, we are changing subjects again, do keep up! - we are dealing with "The Mandalorian" once more, and the episode "The Tragedy".  Sorry for so many "the"s.  No spoilers, much.  So, here's Boba Fett, who dons Mandalorian armour and you have to give the props people - er - props - for managing to convey age and hard useage in the armour as much as Boba himself.  Then!  Art -

Two birds with one stone

     Mando immediately congratulates Boba on his accuracy, as it's not easy to shoot down two shuttles with one missile.

     "I was aiming for the other one," deapans Boba.

     CLANG CLANG CLANG! went the sirens in Conrad's head.  Or should that be 'bells'?  An alarm went off, anyway.

     "I see they're paying space-western homage to "The Magnificent Seven"," I mused.   Art!

       Allow me to poach from IMDB's Quotes page for this scene:

[Britt has just shot a fleeing bandit off his horse]

Chico: Ah, that was the greatest shot I've ever seen.

Britt: The worst! I was aiming at the horse.

     It was a hit at a couple of hundred yards, an ambitious shot for a man with a rifle, never mind a short-barrelled revolver.  Hey, they're not called "magnificent" for nothing!

     Conrad hasn't seen the frankly un-necessary 2016 remake and is actually quite annoyed by it, since it mucked up my Google search results.

Conrad: jowly, scowly and entirely unamused.

A Momentary Lapse Of Reason

No!  Not the Pink Floyd album.  Be sensible, if it was then it would be inside quotation marks and in Fuscia, wouldn't it?

     No, I refer to an hilarious transcription on a Reddit Youtube "Malicious Compliance" story, from Australia.  Hilarious to anyone not present at the time, that is.  The backstory was that a small office within a larger warehouse needed to be demolished, the warehouse itself being one of three units within a sub-divided larger one.  Problem number one: no tools or equipment suitable for demolition.

This kind of thing

     "Oh, just smash it with a forklift," said the manager.  In front of witnesses.

     The Original Poster then set about slowly crushing the office walls, before starting on the roof, at which point he got called away elsewhere.  Problem number two: some idiot decides to carry on where OP left off.  He smashed the roof apart, whereupon there was an enormous BANG and the sprinkler system began flushing disgusting 20-year old water over the whole warehouse; the office roof had contained piping that connected to the fire-protection system.

Think lots of these.  LOTS.

     The sediment-laden slimy glop thoroughly contaminated the whole warehouse, including not only basic production materials but loads of finished product.  Oooh, that's expensive!

     Then they heard the sirens.  A fall in the water pressure had automatically sent emergency notification to the Fire Brigade, who arrived expecting a major explosive incident with ethanol and alcohol fires (some of those production materials).  Understandably, they were not pleased with what had actually happened, which also meant the company would be paying a fine.  Oooh, even more expensive!

"Charge! - O - wait -"

     The FB had to locate the valve that controlled water cut-off.  It wasn't in the warehouse so they had to break into the other warehouse units to locate it.  Oooh, even more expensive property damage!

     OP's manager, realising that he'd set this chain of disasters in motion, helped to hush the whole thing up.  Nobody was fired, not even him.

     No mention is made of the warehouse company's name, though Conrad suspects you could probably Google it with enough diligence*.


I Saw This And Thought Of You

Nothing about Treelaw today; I think the item above contains enough human stupidity for one day.  No, allow me to present a photograph, if Art will leave his bowl of coal alone for long enough.

     Levitating ballfoot-game players?  Probably not.  Conrad suspects that a cameraman got a shot at exactly the right moment, when four players were in the air simultaneously.  It's unclear here if the ball is coming at them, or if one of those inclined heads projected it away from them.

     And don't ask silly questions about which teams they are.  Conrad has no idea and cares less.  Lesser Sneddlepool and You Knighted**.

 

A Twist I Did Not See Coming

Not in the sense of the Eddie Izzard sketch, where he is spoofing "Tales Of The Unexpected", and relates " - he opened the door - and the pig ate him!" which, whilst unexpected, is also cheating, rather.  "And then a gamma-ray burster exploded only a few light years from Earth and destroyed everyone and everything happily ever after".  See?  Unexpected, and also deeply unsatisfying.  You cannot simply pull a plot element like that out of your nether fundament.

Say hello to my little friend

     However, we are not here to discuss astronomy (that's tomorrow), but "Le Mort D'Arthur", where I have hit page 602.  Only 200 more to go! and things have taken an overtly religious tone, with almost all the knights of the Round Table declaring, alongside Sir Galahad, that they will venture out to find the Holy Grail, or "Sangreal".  King Art is unhappy at their swearing binding oaths upon this quest, as he fears they will all get the chop.  Conrad unsure why.  Perhaps he was just a bit liverish and hung-over?

     Anyway, prior to this we have been told that Sir Launcelot Du Lake was the finest knight in all the lands, tales of derring-do, jousting, helping the weak and downtrodden - whoops no.  NO!  Suddenly he's a knavish churl (or a churlish knave) because he hasn't been religious enough.

You'll have trouble finding a kebab big enough, mate

     So, suddenly, 3/4 through the whole book our concepts of morality and righteousness are turned on their heads?  Hmmmmm.  Conrad not enthused.  He suspects Sir Tom (the author, do keep up!) was getting close to pegging it in prison and wanted the good Lord to see him in a favourable light.  Not only that, another knight stole Sir L's horse, harness, armour and sword in the night; but, because he's a religious man, he gets away with it.   Double standards, Tom, double standards!

Double standards

     In the sense of "flag".  We've touched on religion already, no need to add politics to the mix ...

*  Which I don't have.

**  See how clever I am?  I made both these names up.  You'd never guess, would you?