The Blue And The Grey

NO!  Nothing To Do With That Other Civil Unpleasantness

You know, that one across the pond in South Canada, which they go on about as if it's the only civil unpleasantness that ever happened.

     Mind you, it is interesting.  And for those who disparage the South Canadians as 'ice-cream soldiers', don't forget that they somehow managed to ice-cream themselves towards upward of half a million casualties.  We Europeans rather poo-poohed their civil unpleasantness as being entirely untypical of how we, being proper sophisticated and all that, would wage war.  Hmmm well, mass movement by railroads, telegraphy, trench warfare and cigars proved us wrong on that front.

Bavarians going on holiday.  With guns.

     ANYWAY that has absolutely nothing to do with today's Intro, it's just that the uniforms of the opposing armies were blue (for the Union) and grey (for the Confederacy)*.  However, Conrad wanted to point out today's incredible contrast as of 19:00, because the ceaseless rain ceased, the clouds vanished and our skies went from grey to - Art!

Ignore the beer!  Ignore the beer!

     Ah me, welcome to the weather systems of Perfidious Albion, which for most of today has been the Pond Of Eden.  As I type, the grey is rolling back in.  Art!

Keep ignoring the beer!

     Your Humble Scribe wonders if we've been experiencing the eye of the storm.  

     Motley!  Later on we're going to have vole-cano jokes**!

The Jigsaw Proceeds Apace

I know, I know, it's not exactly world-shattering news; less 'small earthquake in Chile' and more 'minor earth-tremor near Bashall Eaves'.  What I mean to say is - sorry, what?  O you don't say.  Er - 

     Apparently located not far from that fracking site.  Conrad is certain nothing bad can come from this!

     Where were we?  O yes, the jigsaw.  Art!

     We look to have got at least half the pieces placed, and in the lower third there are very few pieces missing <pause for applause>.  Conrad would jib at the overall content, though, as it was a common criticism from Tommy Atkins that the RAF was never overhead during the Dunkirk campaign.  Which is an argument for another day***.

Conrad Still Seethes

What did you expect?  The sun still rises, water remains wet - except perhaps not if it's frozen solid and remains in a sub-zero environment - and 'wooly bears' was a nickname for Teuton shrapnel shells in the First Unpleasantness.

     Yes yes yes, we are back to complaining about Codeword solutions, an evil of the modern age.  To me at least.  In 200 years time people will gasp in horror at the trauma I have had to undergo.  Let the wordy war-crimes begin!

"LOCO": Excuse me, exactly WHO is compiling these solutions?  Because Conrad understands that 'Loco' is South Canadian Informal for someone who is completely hat-stand.  SOLUTIONS TO BE IN ENGLISH DAMMIT.  

Do. Not. Get. Me. Started.

"HYRAX": You WHAT!?  Don't tell me, this describes one of the body sections of an insect.  Allow me to Google.  Ah.  Not even close.  Art!

     It's a strange mammal that lives in Africa, which is closer to the elephant than the rat, this being important if they ever make an animated children's cartoon of same.  Rats are kids-cartoon poison.  Hyraxes you could get away with.

"HOLISM":  No, of course it's not about the 'scientific study of holes' because that would be 'holography'.  Let me consult my Collins Concise.  Ah.  "Any doctrine that a system may have properties over and above those of it's parts", so you're talking a Gestalt here?  Hmmm, O and don't forget that a 'holograph' is merely an original manuscript whereas 'holography' is creating three-dimensional images by virtue of using lasers.

     There.  Is that clear?

Told you so.

"HYPOTONIC":  Your Humble Scribe knows enough Latin to recognise "Hypo" as meaning "Under", so where does that leave us O though knowledgeable Collins Concise?  Oho, and also aha: 'referring to muscles, lacking a normal tone or tension", possibly also know technically as under-par.  That "Hypotonic" would be Conrad as he seethes about these solutions, in a violently enraged tone and whilst suffering considerable tension.

Like this

ROAST THE CHEF TO DEATH!

Yes well, you surely didn't believe that we were going to sentence Gordon Ramsay to be burnt at the stake for his heretical promotion of ketchup on chips, did you?  No, this is another referral to people who have quick and easy access to volcanoes and hence lava.  Let Your Humble Scribe point out that volcanoes across the globe can be very different in operation; that one in Iceland is hazardous to approach because i) it is violently spitting out lava in all directions and ii) it is also venting poisonous gasses, which can kill you if the wind changes direction whilst you're roasting your marshmallow.  Art!

Iceland: the ironically-named nation

     Then if we transit the globe to Hawaii, we find volcanoes of a more measured temperament.  Less risk of toxic gas, and nice, predictable, slow lava flows.

"Stay!"

     Here we meet Bryan Lowry.  Bryan is a big fan of destructive entertainment, which is widely seen here at BOOJUM! as a very good thing, and he also has ready access to fresh lava flows, which immediately led to him wondering "What would happen if you stuck X/Y/Z in lava?"  Art!

     Here you can see proof positive that a tin of Chef Boyardee Ravioli cannot resist the titanic temperatures and pressures of molten rock.  You might have reasonably guessed this before; now you know beyond reasonable doubt.

Finally -

We don't need a lot here to get up to the Compositional Ton, so I shall return to the topic of the Chew Reservoir, a splendid feat of Edwardian engineering that was built over a century ago and which is still functioning perfectly well.  Back in those days excellency of design and construction was taken for granted; they had to work hard to do a bad job.  Art!

     Here you see ground level as the horizontal line across the diagram; everything below that was the 'Puddle trench', which had to reach strata that were impermeable to water before it could then be back-filled, to prevent any leakage.  It was immensely deep, dark and dangerous, and although there are no photographs taken in it's depths, we do have some redolent sketches.  Art!

     Conrad thinks that, instead of the innocuous 'Puddle Trench' it should have been called "DEADLY DARK DEEP DUNGEON OF DEATH" although this might have led to problems with recruitment and retention.  Swings and roundabouts.

And with that we are jolly well done!

*  Let us not get into the New York Zouaves.

**  Long story. See earlier May posts.

***  Saint Swithin's Day 2027

Lava, Meet Tongue

Also Stomach

Your Humble Scribe didn't imagine that there is a niche for vloggers who do, actually, for real, cook food with lava.  Yet I have now discovered that such things exist.  Truly Hom. Sap.'s enterprise, caprice and sheer foolishness know no limits.  Let us set the scene: Marcum Crater in Vanuatu, which is a seething pit full of molten rock.  Art!

     Now, the very first thing that would come to mind looking at this would be, of course - obviously! - roasting marshmallows over it.  At least in some people's minds it would be the first thing, rather than the more usual "DANGER!  DEVIL HOTNESS! AVOID".  Enter Simon.  Art?

     Yes, that's Simon, busy quaffing beer on the edge of a volcano, balanced on a flimsy little folding chair, dangling his marshmallow o'er the magma.  What could possibly go wrong?

     Apparently nothing did, as both Simon and his camera-buddy came out intact, but you must admit hearing both "Beer" and "Volcano" in the same sentence does not bode well.

     ANYWAY that has very little to do with what I wanted to open this Intro with, which was a case of entitlement, stupidity and vengeance delivered via what has been described as "like eating molten lava".

     Allow me to introduce the 'Carolina Reaper' chilli pepper.  Art!

Not exactly prepossessing, is it?

     For many years this has been the hottest chilli pepper in the world, with a peak Scoville rating of 2.2 million; your average Cayenne pepper, for comparison, is a mere 50,000 Scoville's.  Pepper spray is rated at 5 million.  And there appears to be a competition by growers to come up with even hotter peppers than the Reaper.

     Let us now return to the meat of the matter, a Reddit post where Original Poster related how some greedy, lazy, entitled food thief at work stole someone's lunch every day instead of bringing in their own; we shall call them GLEFT.  Every day someone would open the office fridge to find their lunch gone and GLEFT looking smug and full.  When OP's pot pie was stolen she reached breaking point.  She didn't detail but said her cultural background involved lots of hot and spicy food, so she was well-used to mealtimes being high on the Scoville scale.  She then made a stew, using three Carolina Reapers, making sure to cook it for hours and hours, because that way all the spicy goodness permeates the stew O so well.  Even she found eating it a bit of a stretch, getting the sweats and watering eyes.  Art!

Know your enemy

     She took it into work for lunch every day, and do you know what?  One lunchtime it vanished, and GLEFT was off work sick for several days with acute stomach problems.  He then had the gall to have her up in front of HR for trying to poison him, at which point he had to admit stealing her lunch and eating it, at which further point HR told him to get stuffed; if he was going to steal people's food, he could suffer the consequences.  GLEFT didn't steal food again, probably because i) he feared being 'poisoned' again and ii) HR probably told him another theft and he's gone via Gross Misconduct.  A very satisfying outcome!

     Oh, and the name of the chap who bred the Carolina Reaper?  Ed Currie, I kid you not.

Er - only if you have a copper stomach, folks

     The motley is currently skulking around in disguise and generally keeping a low profile, as fans of The Skreeming Voles (remember them?) took it especially badly when it used live critters for it's game of Whack-A-Vole.

THIS IS NOT A TANK!

You should recall Conrad's fervid criticism of the BBC recently, when they wrongly  described an amphibious troop-carrier as a "Tank".  It seems that Your Humble Scribe has been harping on about this before, for I came across an old post dedicated to the subject.  

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2014/05/thats-not-tank.html

     I'm not going to copy-and-paste because it's nearly 700 words long.  Yes, that's all I was aiming for in terms of would count.  Mind you, it was 7 years ago.

The one responsible for it all

     And we're already up to that now.

Hindsight: With 20/20 Vision

No, nothing about old posts from years ago.  Rather, I want to analyse some of the contemporary images and captions from that wartime publication "The War Illustrated", because we now know a whole lot more than they did at the time.  The first issue is dated June 1942, and if noble Art can put down his bowl of coking coal ...

     I think this is an acclimatisation exercise for the deserts of North Africa, as I cannot think otherwise why you need soldiers to leap through fire.

     This is an interesting collection of photographs taken during the Battle of Gazala, which is one of those where the British generals at the top managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.  At top is a shattered Panzer Mk IV (you can tell from the short chunky barrel and blast deflector) and the spectators are standing much too close, because if there's unexpended ammunition inside that blazing hull ...

     Then next down we can see Free French troops, and you can tell they're FF because those portees are mounting the distinctive 25mm AT gun that the French used.  By this time only marginally effective against tanks unless at point-blank range.  We have actually covered this gun in some detail after "Forgotten Weapons" got their hands on a working version.  Art!

     Then we have the despondent General Cruewell, shot down whilst tootling about in a scout plane, getting out of a Dingo scout car.  From scout to scout, watch the General climb out*.

     And lastly, a group of Grant tanks, dubbed "Egypt's Last Hope", which were an unpleasant surprise to the Axis, as they could stand off and shell from previously unheard-of distances.  High-explosive shell, too, which immediately made being an Axis anti-tank gunner a much dicier occupation.

Finally -

What a wet and miserable Bank Holiday!  It's more like February than May.  I also have to get some supplies from the Co-Op later on and do NOT fancy trudging into Royton a.k.a. Babylon Lite for washing-up liquid and bread.  Perhaps I shall cheat and - go by car! <gasps of horror in the background>.  O an addendum; on Saturday I went into the charity shops to look for a certain breed of DVD and came up empty-handed.  All the ones on offer were contemporary things from the Nineties at the earliest.  When what Conrad wanted were sci-fi films from the Fifties and Sixties <sad face>.  I might just have to break down and <shudders> buy some.

Royton of old

     And with that we are done done done!

*  I made this up all by myself.  Can you tell?

Looking Forward To The Past

A Tip O' The Hat To "Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads?" There

Here we are on a rather changeable Sunday, the weather doing it's usual trick of five seasons in one day.  We are also back to Your Mercurial Scribe's weekly retrospective, because he's not going to spend ninety minutes creating an epic for the ages that only 6 people read.  Don't forget, folks, reading BOOJUM! is the only way your descendants are going to avoid the organ banks or the uranium mines when I take over.  And yes, I WILL know who's been reading and who hasn't.  Art!

"The Road To Dunkirk"

    I found one of the missing edge pieces, so we are now down to only 2 absent.  I think the next state will be to assemble all the pieces that represent the Hurricane and get to work on that.  After that, the landscape, and after that - the undifferentiated big blue spaces.

     Jigsaws - the puzzles created specifically for us pedantic hair-splitters of the world.

     ANYWAY let us now praise famous men commence with the looking back.

2020

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2020/05/i-get-bird.html

2019

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2019/05/being-bit-of-bugger.html

2018

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2018/05/your-humble-scribe-on-diatribe.html

2017

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2017/05/rochdale-city-of-dead.html

2016

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2016/05/im-conflicted.html

2015

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2015/05/no-comparison-heres-harry-harrison.html

2014

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2014/05/egad-in-only-eight-hours.html

Electro-Mechanical Is Not Satanical

This One Is A Bit Abstract

But don't worry!  I can still shoehorn a bit of "Forbidden Planet" in to provide a sound basis in reality.  All this Intro is thanks to re-discovering that terrific photo of Michael Collins in the Apollo 11 Command Module, which Conrad had saved in his Favourites as a link to Facebook - not the BBC as I originally believed.

     ANYWAY let us jump into the far future, and a television series you may have heard of: "Star Trek: The Next Generation", where the bridge of the 'Enterprise' seems to have been designed by an entity keen to evoke all the wonder and suspense of a furniture showroom.  Art!

     Excruciatingly bland.  Everything is all touch-screen and digital, which is what comes of being created when those things were cutting-edge in the real world.  Not to mention the soft pastel shades of grey and beige.  Beige!  The most neutral colour in the Universe.  How is the Neutral Zone shown on star maps?  As a big swatch of beige.  Sheesh.  Remember the original series, and their bridge?

Sharp bits!  Straight edges!  Primary colours!

     Also, remember the target scanner that got added to Sulu's station, which  would elevate into position?  That was cool.  Art!

     Okay, let us now jump from the far future to the more recent past, and an illustration of how complex electro-mechanical systems were back in 1969.  Art!

     Bear in mind that Mike has to be cognizant (not a word you expected to see today) with ALL those controls, because whilst he's alone in orbit above Ma Moon, those controls and dials and buttons and meters are his responsibility.  Doubtless there's an explanatory diagram floating around teh interwebz that explains what all those things do.  Can't be bothered to track it down.  I wonder - what does the current flight deck of a B52 BUFF* look like as opposed to those of the Sixties?

     Oh - the motley?  Currently in jail for playing Whack-a-Mole**.

"Biggles And The Penitent Thief" By Captain W.E. Johns

Not strictly relevant, I admit, yet it was the first thing that came to mind when reading about a South Canadian bank robber who not only gave himself up, but whom has turned his life around and now runs motivational courses.  Art!

   Mr Dyer was an ex-Marine who got into drugs, and turned to robbing banks to pay for his habit and also pay off some very dangerous people who were threatening his family.  He carried out 100 robberies - no skimping on his work ethic there - before turning himself in during 2001 and serving a nine-year sentence.  Since when he has stayed on the straight and narrow and seeks to help others do so.  That above is him assessing the bank robbery scene in that very film, which he didn't rate very highly.  He did point out that the seemingly impregnable bank vault would, in reality, be open for much of the bank's opening hours.

     Sorry, did you expect an unhappy ending?

Yahoo, Another Chance To Mention "Forbidden Planet"!

Yes, we've mentioned the matte work on this film already, and I wanted to showcase some of the miniature effects, which were cleverly intercut with matte work to give a sense of immense scale to the Krell Machine.  Art!

     The matte effect here is the walkway, with the three tiny human protagonists walking along it, so you have a context to judge scale.  Art!

"Look down, gentlemen.  Are you afraid?"

     Conrad would be; according to Morbius there's 3,800 levels below this walkway, and the 'guard-rail' would be more likely to trip you up than save you.  It may have had more utility for the Krell although I wouldn't bet on it.  Art!

A very long way down

     Nothing is explained about what anything does or is, making the vista truly alien and unsettling, and to be shunned if you have the slightest twinge of vertigo.

"Ushanka Show"

Back to more Sinister-era high-jinks with Sergei, whose latest video is titled "They Steal Everything!".  He quotes from the journal of a very high-level Sinister official, who, together with his comrades, was discussing the extremely serious, pervasive and extensive theft of goods in transit, usually on the railways.  Billions of roubles-worth of goods were being pilfered from trains and as a metric, about 1/3 of all cars that arrived at destination had to be returned to the factory as various parts were missing.  Art!

     Tractors, too, were stripped of parts; not that you could own your own tractor and so fix it for free, but to re-sell on the black market.  Meat and fish were also targeted, so if you had the money, you could eat very well providing you knew someone who did business on the side.  Another metric: in 1971 4,000 people were arrested for theft on the railways; in 1979 11,000 people were arrested for the same offence.  So it was getting worse!  Of course the pampered bigwigs simply could not get their heads around why people would steal from the State, which they saw as stealing from themselves.

     Conrad is pretty sure he's read about whole locomotives being stolen, five in one instance, and wonders how you'd make a profit from that?

"Going cheap.  One former owner.  Low mileage.  Cash offers only please."

"Homosalate"

NO!  This is nothing seedy or sleazy, how many times do I have to recite that BOOJUM! is eminently SFW, and that bare bottom we had on once was a statue's which makes it art and thus okay.  Okay?

     No, Homosalate is an active ingredient used in commercial sunscreens, technically 3,3,5-trimethylcyclohexyl 2-hydroxybenzoate, so it's no wonder they call it Homosalate.  It's moderately effective at screening skin from UVB, yet completely useless at screening from UVA, so it gets used with a battery of other sunscreen agents.

     And why did I mention this chemical compound?  Because I was doing my nosy bit, examining the ingredients on a can of sunscreen spray.

The cause of a whole lot of problems

     Sadly at present, sunscreens not required in This Sceptred Isle.

     And with that we are done, because Your Hungry Scribe wants his lunch.  Sagol! (which is "Goodbye" in Azeri).

*  "Big Ugly Fat Feller"

**  With real moles***.

***  Only kidding!  With real voles.

It's Less Bovver

This One Is Going To Take Some Explaining

Because it involves English vernacular which dates back a good few decades, meaning you young whippersnippers won't be familiar with it.  We are talking, of course - obviously! - about the differing claims of lawnmower manufacturers, whom used to put out rival adverts over our laughably-named 'summer' here in the Allotment of Eden.  One marque was your traditional motor-mower, where the engine both propelled it forward and rotated the blades.  Art!

    As you can see, the mown grass got collected in a bin at the back. Then there was the hover-mower, which floated on a cushion of air to trim the greenery.  Art!

     As you can see, it is a far less substantial beast than the rotary, with the drawback that you cannot collect the cuttings thanks to them being spewed out across 360 degrees.  Even a mere slip of a girl could handily operate one of these, with their tagline on adverts being "It's a lot less bovver with a hover", Conrad not exactly approving of mutilating "bother" like that.

     We now jump 78 million miles, because that above is only an Intro to the Intro, for Lo! we are back with the Martian helicopter Ingenuity.  Art!

The little chopper that's not a whopper

     NASA has done it's proof-of-concept flying and is now going to use Ingenuity for further scouting missions, meaning it can carry out reconnaissance of more distant terrain for Perseverance, looking out for potential problems, as well as assaying vertical features beyond the rover's reach.  This is work that Perseverance as a rover simply cannot do on it's own, whereas 'twill be child's play for Ingie.   It will also be a valuable early-warning system should the rover encroach on any potentially hostile wildlife, although I think they are restricted to the Martian highlands*.

     The idea is to keep going for at least the next Martian 'month' of 30 Sols, and NASA is prepared to work Ingenuity to destruction if need be, as the really big question, Will A Marscopter Work? has been answered.

With puny human for scale

     If you reinforce the ribs on a golfing umbrella with angle-iron, so that it won't immediately invert, could you jump off a roof using it as a parachute?  Motley!

The Loneliest Boy In New York The Solar System

Conrad noted the passing recently of Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins, who'd had a good innings at 91.  The BBC had a fantastic photograph of him in the Command Module, which I need to try and dig up.  Art!

     Nope, can't find it and don't want to start looking or I'll get distracted and it'll be 3 hours later before I come back here.  Let us try a combined approach.  Art!

Mike does a Codeword to pass the time in orbit

     
      Of course, Apollo 11 was stuffed full of the wonderful electro-mechanical gadgetry that they had at the time, and I found an excellent example of same.  Art!

So many dials!

     While Buzz and Neil were playing golf and planting flags on the Moon, Mike was whizzing round that celestial body in the Command and Service Module, keeping the seats warm.  No, actually he had to ensure that the CSM rendezvoused on time and at the right location and altitude with the Ascent Stage of the Lunar Excursion Module, because the latter didn't have much fuel to manoeuvre with.  Art!

The Command Module is the conical bit

     Whilst Neil and Buzz had each other for company, Mike was entirely solo, and when the CSM entered radio-shadow behind the Moon, he didn't even have radio contact with anyone.  He was, at that point, genuinely the loneliest Hom. Sap. in the Solar System.  Food for thought!

     So much astronomy - let's have something more down-to-earth.

Apocalyptic Fury!

Conrad is, as per usual, erupting with all the rage of a 55 megaton warhead, and the cause is, as per usual, Codeword solutions.  SIT BACK DOWN!  This is important, because I say it is, and also because though I froth at the mouth at their effrontery, it also generates a fair bit of content for BOOJUM!  So -

"VERBATIM": Doubtless Latin in origin <checks Collins Concise, correct, hacks and spits>.  It means to repeat or recite in exactly the same words as someone else uses, and the Latin it derives from means "Words" and is "Verbum".  Your Honour, I rest my case.

"Green" being "Virid" in Latin and thus close enough

"ULNA":  This is the medical term for one of the bones of the human forearm, and if Art can put down his plate of coal -

     WHAT ARE WE DOCTORS AND ANATOMISTS NOW?

     Really.  You can see my point, can't you?

"JAZZIER": You see?  You see how they try and put 2 of the least-used letters in a Codeword into a single solution?  Conrad is not convinced this is even a proper word.  Nope, I shan't look in the Collins Concise, I shall merely carry this conviction with me forever.

"CRUX": Yes yes yes, Latin for "Cross", which is what Your Humble Scribe is at the moment.  Art!

The Crux Australis, or Southern Cross

     Fortunately I have run out of solutions to be offended by or my blood pressure would be off the chart.  Motley!  Run out the gin tank and a couple of pint glasses.

Finally -

Conrad came across another interesting Youtube channel by a chap called Martin Zero, which seems to be concerned with industrial archaeology in the North West, and which Your Humble Scribe will almost certainly be mentioning in the future. The video I selected was a hike by himself and two colleagues to Chew Reservoir, which Conrad had heard of but knew nothing about.  Art!

Back in the day

     It was built between 1907 and 1912, being a major construction undertaking since it was at the top of the moors in the Peak District, in other words the middle of nowhere, and remained the highest reservoir in England until 1971.  The water in it, as Martin pointed out, is almost black thanks to the peat it travels through, and it was intended as a 'compensation' reservoir, to refill rivers that had been used for industry.  Not for drinking, although a filtration plant was also built to be used for drinking water, in times of drought.  Right.  Drought.  In the Pond of Eden.

     And with that we are done!

*  Don't play dumb.  You know what I mean.

MARTIAN ROCK SNAKES!

I Get Jittery -

Cos I'm So Hair-Splittery

Yes but we knew that already.  Conrad, as you should surely know by now, is a pedant of the very worst kind, always ready to leap in where there are spelling errors or mistakes of fact, especially in any obscure field he happens to be well-read in, particularly etymology*.

     Also, TANK.  Conrad had been forewarned by Richard (the jammy swine who's retired to Spain) about this issue, so my blood merely simmered fiercely rather than boiled.  Art!

     All credit to the people who shifted the mud covering this item, and the mud within it, as it has a cargo hold which held probably 4 tons of overburden.  Art!

     It's in particularly spry form for a vehicle buried in mud for 74 years and the expert eye would immediately identify it as an LVTP, or "Buffalo", and - here's the important point -

IT IS NOT A TANK

     Now, how would the BBC like it if a correspondent from South Canada came across and reported about the next One Day International at Lords as "This wacky Limey baseball game!".  Exactly.

     To be a tank it needs to be fully tracked, have an enclosed hull (oops) and a fully rotating turret (oops again), plus if British it MUST have a 'boiling vessel' in order to make tea**.  Art!

At Blackpool with the tide out

     They were used an awful lot in the Pacific, and on a limited scale in Europe during the Second Unpleasantness, from late 1944 onwards.  They could load up with a cargo or a platoon of soldiers, drive from the road into the river, come out on the opposite bank and deposit their cargo.  No bridge needed, and much, much faster than ferries.  "Landing Vehicle Tracked Personnel" since you ask.

     There.  I think my ire has calmed, from positively volcanic to merely geser-y.

Binned

You will have to excuse the third-hand nature of this item, as it is transcribed from a British American Reddit poster who lived in Ontario.  This location is important. 

Oscillating Ontario

    He used to dump his rubbish in giant communal plastic rubbish bins that were located along a side road.  Every week a drunken plonker coming back from the local pub/bar (not sure about British American terminology here) would deliberately hit these bins and damage them; in winter, with sub-sub zero temperatures, the plastic would become brittle and shatter on impact.  The Ontario city authorities didn't bother trying to track the culprit down, they just replaced the bins.  Art!

Something this big

     Well, someone got fed up of having to walk to distant, intact, rubbish bins, so they peevishly filled one of these bins with water.  In Ontario, during winter, where it regularly reaches -3200C***.

     The Original Poster was awoken in the small hours when police came to detain a drunken driver, whose 'Buick' was completely totalled, having hit the bin filled with ice whilst trying to damage it as per usual.  The car is a write-off, thanks to hitting two and a half tons of solid ice.  The bin was not harmed at all.  However, nobody fancied trying to shift that much deadweight, so it remained there until spring, when it thawed.

Buick Intactus

Talking Of Hair-Splitting 

The jigsaw is coming along fairly well, thank you for asking.  There are definitely 3 edge pieces missing, which naturally has Your Humble Scribe worrying that there are others absent as well.  We shall see in a short while, one supposes.  Art!

     That's most of the centre close-up stuff added in.  Conrad now has to decide what option to choose next, because there are scads of plain blue sky pieces to locate and place. #MyRockAndRollLifestyle. 

Here In The Ear

As you may recall, Conrad has been of late listening to his i-pod via battery-powered headphones, which give a splendidly LOUD rendition of whatever is playing.  Art!

     The peculiar thing is, the input jack that attaches lead to headphones is a bit squirrely, and does not always connect properly.  This lead to Conrad playing a Del Amitri track this afternoon and thinking "??? Del Amitri are not known for instrumental tracks", wiggling the lead and having the vocals suddenly re-appear (or re-hear).  An odd occurrence and I may try to deliberately invoke it, just to hear instrumental versions of songs that are not instrumentals.  For Your Humble Scribe, as well as being a pedantic hair-splitter, is also wilfully perverse.

Speaking Of Which

Conrad remembers hearing Mickey Rourke, bass player with The Smiths, playing a track called "Oscillate Wildly" on Revolution Radio (before that prat Steve Penk bought up the contract), pointing out that it was an instrumental, and that still, Morrisey was credited with co-writing it.  Every word true.  Art!

     Nice work if you can get it.

     

Trepidation

Your Humble Scribe is off to the hospital this afternoon, to get his second dose of the magic anti-plague water, which fills him with apprehension.  No, nothing to do with the dose and any side effects; rather, because I am a massive coward, the thought of having a horribly sharp needle poked into my arm is not encouraging.  Not only that, it's been a real admin-loaded faff to get booked in.  You need to follow a link from a Message, book the appointment with your NHS number, load an OQ code into your phone, have your NHS number at the vaccination, the vaccination certificate from last time - and an identity card.

Sinister NHS bureaucracy at work!

     

     I've also written down my shoe size and inside leg measurements, just in case.

Finally -

One of Conrad's Very Guilty Pleasures is in watching all those police shows which feature car chases and body-camera film footage, and "Police Interceptors" is both of those and on now - I can only type this because they've gone to the commercial break and I can now draw breath.  Whilst it's on I am too busy shouting "RAM THEM OFF THE ROAD!  RAM THEM!  RAM RAM RAM!"

Once that helicopter is on you, your bottom is grass

*  NO!  You are mistaking it for either entomology, the study of insects, or epistemology, which I don't think I'll define for you.  Heh.

**  This is in deadly earnest.  We've covered it before.  South Canadian tank crews are immensely envious of this innovation.

***  There may be a bit of poetic licence in there.