I AM MIGHTY AND TRIUMPHANT!

Of Course We Knew That Already

Well, this is a kind of comparative 'mighty and triumphant', which you might also consider less a small earthquake in Chile and closer to a minor earth tremor in Ramsbottom (someone dropped a plate).  Art!

     The jigsaw is now complete!  Previously Your Humble Scribe had asserted that he had not dropped or lost any pieces, so there were two missing.

     Ah but!  Whilst swivelling in my chair during work what did I espy underneath the paste table?  NO!  Not a Mongolian Death Worm.  The two missing pieces, which had managed to become sentient and shuffled themselves off the table edge to try escaping because that's the only explanation, finally COMPLETED "The Road To Dunkirk".  Hooray!

     That's today's Intro.  Yes, it's short, and unusually so, because we like to mix it up here occasionally.  Motley!  Time for the Poison Paintball Combat Crunch*!

When You Need A Really, Really BIG Gun

As you should surely know by now, Conrad follows <ahem> 'Gun Jesus' Ian McCollom of Youtube channel  "Forgotten Weapons", who gets his hands on innumerable exotic and unusual weapons and films the outcome <Conrad sighs wistfully thinking about all those guns ...>.

     Anyway, Ian laid his hot sweaty paws upon a Tankgewehr of the First Unpleasantness, and some ammunition for it.  What am I talking about?  Art!

     Ian is rather petite, yes, but that's still a whacking big gun.  It was a Teuton answer to Perfidious Albion's TANK, basically being an up-scaled Mauser 98K, firing an enormous 13 mm bullet.  The question was, could this actually penetrate a British tank's armour plate?  Not having an entire Mark IV to practice upon, Ian sourced an armour plate that had to stand in for a Mark IV, and his mate who supplied the gun and ammo got first crack.  Art!

"Take aim!"

Recoil is not your friend

     Since they were firing from only 50 yards away, and were upright and thus had a really good view of the target, they hit the target.  Art!

     The palpable hit goes right through it.  As Ian explains, anyone on the receiving end of this inside the tank would be having a rather torrid time of it.  He then asks the question "What would happen if the hit was at an angle, rather than square-on?".  So they re-orient the armour plate.  Art!

     The bullet bounced off.  It still kicked off a lot of spalling on the inside, so AGAIN if you were on the inside of this, you'd be having a horrid time of it.

     HOWEVER.

     You knew that was coming, didn't you?  In order to get a good view of the target and hit it, both shooters were, as mentioned above, standing upright, and were only 50 yards from the 'tank'.  This is a big no-no.  Firstly, the recoil on this is so immense that it ought to be fired lying down.  Secondly, if you shoot it lying down, the muzzle blast immediately gives your position away.  Thirdly, standing upright on a First Unpleasantness battlefield ONLY FIFTY YARDS FROM A TANK is a quick way of seeing if you're shortly going to be greeting Saint Michael or venturing into the Hot Place.  Art!

     They tended to have stubble-hoppers in close attendance, who would probably not be very happy at errant Teutons trying to colander their escorting tank.

     The Teutons did have a small number of specifically-designed anti-tank artillery guns, which were scattered so widely that I don't recall ever reading about any taking on a tank, as there was usually a mismatch about where they were deployed versus where the tanks were.  The real menace for a tank was the Teuton field artillery, since a 77 mm 'whiz-bang' could easily knock out a Mark IV.  Art!

The anti-tank artillery I mentioned

     I see our second item has made up for the shortness of the Intro.  Go me.

Battlescar Galactigarbage

Cool your jets, this has nothing to do with the awesome re-boot series which I am slowly re-watching, nor is it anything to do with the appalling original offshoot which I am not going to sully my lips with by saying, nor my fingers by typing.  No!  For I am referring, of course - obviously! - to Project Icarus and Project Daedalus, those scientifically plausible and almost realistic designs for an interstellar probe.  Art!

Not small at all

     As you recall, the first stage was to boost up to 7% of lightspeed, before the second stage separated and continued boosting from that initial velocity up to 12% of lightspeed.

     The thing is, that leaves the first stage as a 1,700 ton missile heading off into the wild black yonder at 13,000 miles per second.  To give you an impression of how fast that is, it means the discarded interstellar remnant First Stage could cross cis-lunar space from Earth to the Moon in all of 18 seconds.  "Cross fingers and hope" is not really sufficient to prevent this unguided missile from impacting and destroying an entire planet.  Conrad would suggest a self-destruct mechanism, possibly a small fission warhead that would vapourise the whole thing on detonation.

     That still leaves us with the second stage, which is going to be travelling at 12% of lightspeed, or 22,000 miles per second.  It doesn't stop or even slow down in the target solar system, just keeps on going, all 1,000 tons of it.  Art!

Oooops.

     Of course, I could be overthinking this ...

A Malicious Wallow In Other People's Battiness

Yes, this is about "Batwoman", that amazingly cheap and shoddy show on the CW, which Your Humble Has never yet had to endure, thanks to the efforts of people like Az and his "Heels Versus Babyface" Youtube channel.  We the people salute you, Az, as you get driven ever-closer to the sanity cliff.  Originally this series was going to halt at 13 episodes, yet for some reason - definitely NOT viewer demand! - they have added another 5, meaning our suffering reviewers now have to down two bottles of Jack Daniels before watching.  Art!

     Let me interpret those numbers for you.  "0.11" is the audience in the <shudders at the horrid Americanism> Target Demographic of viewers aged 18 to 49.  The lower the worse.  0.11 is bad.  "0.399" is viewers in numbers of millions, so this snoozefest is now at 399,00 viewers and - a chorus we like to repeat - the lowest viewing figures of both seasons.  It has lost nearly half it's viewers from the premiere episode of Season 2, and the shrink keeps happening.  Once again - who are they making this for?

Baroness Rachel Heyhoe Flint in action!

Finally -

We are well over the Compositional Ton by now.  What can I tie up loose ends with?  Actually there was an hilarious photo from the BBC about Czechs who are currently protesting about Tsar Putin's unwanted meddling in their country, up to and including explosive sabotage.  They don't like him at all, and because the Czechs are long given to satire - well, let me find the picture -  Art!

     To add insult to injury, and a little lemon juice to the salted wound, this effigy is parked outside the Ruffian embassy in Prague.  Chaps, Jaroslav Hacek would be proud of you!

 

*  It's only hydrocyanic acid, barely even toxic.

When Winnie Met Nellie

Don't Worry No Rom-Com Involved

For the "Winnie" in this case is an elderly overweight man and "Nellie" was an enormous mechanical contrivance, as we are referring to Prime Minister Winston Churchill and one of his brainchildren.  We have covered this in the past, but Your Humble Scribe has recently come across more detailed illustrations of the brutal beast itself, which means we can resurrect the topic.  Art!

Winnie and Nellie
(I don't have to identify which is which, do I?)

     The idea behind Nellie (from "Naval Land Equipment" since Winnie, completely out of his proper sphere in the Admiralty, had decided it was going to happen), as of early 1940, was that these metal behemoths would excavate a huge trench all the way from friendly lines to unfriendly ones.  As you can see from above, Nellie had a giant plough to dig out the upper part of the trench, and a rotating cutting drum to gouge out the lower part, and we have a side-view showing the internal arrangement.  Art!

     It is obviously enormous.  This is the smaller variant, which was 77 feet long and which topped the scales at 117 tons, and which was a fearful bother to move anywhere thanks to it's sheer bulk and mass, in fact requiring a special tracked trailer and four bulldozers to shift it.  Despite being so vast, the crew compartment was horribly cramped and conditions inside were vile when in operation.  Nor did it help that Nellie's turning circle was a mile across making it possibly one of the least nimble machines ever built.  Art!

Nellie getting some TLC
(Note the missing track plates!)

     If this madcap scheme were proposed by anyone less influential and persistent than the PM, as he later became, this gigantic mechanical folly would have been gladly disposed of by the end of 1940.  In fact 'twas not binned until 1943, at which Winnie came out with one of his great bon mots:" I am responsible but impenitent".  Also, remember that the military liaison officer for these lumbering monsters was one Brigadier Ling.  This will be important later.  Art!

     

     A tip o' the cap to "Think Defence" for all the extra photographs and diagrams that we've not seen before, also available at

https://www.thinkdefence.co.uk/winston-nellie-trenching-machine/

     should you wish to peruse the original article.  Of course, the ultimate accolade is that there are scale models of the Nellie, one in 1/300 white metal, and the other in 1/76 resin.  Art!

1/300 with puny Panzer for scale

1/76 with winsome Winnie for scale

     I must ask on the SOTCW Facebook page if anyone there has ever played a wargame with a Nellie present*.

      Motley!  In honour of Nellie, I have dug some trenches.  You and I are going to swim them against the clock.  Yes, "swim"; I dug them out in a peat marsh a few hours ago and by now they should be nicely full.

BOG SNORKELLING**!

Okay From Being Wet And Smelly -

To being wet and smelly.  Yesterday we broached the subject of Martin Zero's venture along the Bridgewater Canal, in search of a hidden trapdoor.  He had known about this for years (more than I did and I used to work near there in the mid-Eighties) and serendipitously came across the Canal And Rivers Trust, who were due to drain, empty and clean Lock 89, where the trapdoor is said to be.  They must have taken pity on his schoolboy exuberance when they mentioned this, and invited him along to see how things went.  Art!

     This is Martin at Lock 89, pointing to the Deansgate Lock just as the canal begins to empty.  To port of that bridge he's pointing to is where the old Hacienda used to stand, another place Your Humble Scribe was familiar with back in the day.  Next!

     A gleeful Martin down in the stinking mud that covers the canal bottom, and in the background you can see some of the detritus that litters said bottom, as members of the public, frequently the worse for wear thanks to the demon drink as there are bars all round here, hurl things into the canal, up to and including each other.  Next!

The trapdoor is revealed!

     A couple of hefty blokes fished around in the water at canal bottom and found the chain that links to the trapdoor, giving it a good heave and thus allowing water to drain away.  This drain leads, in a drop of several yards, to the completely culverted River Tib, thus allowing water still flowing into the Bridgewater Canal to be continually removed.  Next!

     The trapdoor itself.  As Martin observed, more like a piece of ship's hull than anything else.  Before you ask, it's probably Listed and they're not allowed to remove or replace it until or unless it falls apart, which it doesn't look like doing anytime soon.  It may not be the original, since Lock 89 has been drained a few times, yet it's probably over a century old.  Next!

     An unhappy denizen of the depths is relocated.

     You've seen the canal pre-cleanup, and it was a dirty old mess.  Allow Conrad to show you Martin's final photo, which is definitely the "After" shot.  Art!

     Look at the condition of those bricks lining the bottom; that's quality and craftmanship for you.

     All photos taken are from Martin's Youtube channel, found at:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3fqrmSkFjmkGGBPkoBO1GQ

     Bless the lad, he's just so exuberantly involved you can't help but be interested.

Darwin Award Wannabes

Conrad was reading with horrified humour a Youtube Reddit account of the biggest safety violations ever witnessed, which is where that horror story about the cardboard compactor was from.  There was another one about South Canadian asbestos abatement workers, one of whom told the Original Poster that he, and others he worked with regularly took off their respirators "because they got warm".  Right.  A ghastly lingering death versus momentary discomfort.  Yeah, asbestos, what can possibly go wro -

     Actually there was more.  These workers used to scoop up the scummy residue left from processing the asbestos, which itself contained lots and lots of yummy asbestos, and - they would have snowball fights with it.

Sorry but you cannot fix stupid

Finally -

Conrad was quite impressed with a Cryptic Crossword clue in the MEN, as lately it's just not the challenge it used to be.  "Covering with main fish (7)" was the clue, and the answer was "SEALING", since "main" is another word for "Sea" and a "Ling" is a species of fish.  Art!

BOO!

     Pretty dun and dull in colouration.  You might even say it's a Brown Ling.  Even abbreviate it to B. Ling.  I did warn you.

*  "Society Of Twentieth-Century Wargamers" before you ask.

**  A real sport.  Trust me on this.

Trapdoors

NO!  Nothing To Do With The Repellent Spider Species

As you should surely know by now, Conrad is both a massive coward and scared of spiders beyond reason, more than any person except Jayne, whom cannot remain in the room with you if the word "Arachnophobia" is mentioned.  If there was ever an arachnophobic version of the film "Arachnophobia" made, it would be all of twelve minutes long.

And this guy would be in six of them

     ANYWAY that has little to nothing to do concerning what we are gathered here today for, which doesn't have anything to do with that hilarious children's television program "The Trapdoor" which Conrad is eminently familiar with, since it was one of Darling Daughter's staples when she was young and cute.  Art!

     The premise is that Berk (the big blue blob above) lives in a castle, and in the very bottom-most deepest darkest dungeon, there is a trapdoor, which keeps out innumerable hideous creepy-crawlies, which are forever trying to get in.  Conrad would have sealed it up with 2,500 tons of concrete, but your view may differ.

     No, what we are here for today is an historical archaeological excursion into the hydrodynamic history of Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell, which, for the purposes of this Intro, we shall call "Manchester".  Bring on Martin Zero!

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3fqrmSkFjmkGGBPkoBO1GQ

That's his Youtube link, which I would encourage you to follow.  Martin looks at industrial archaeology across Greater Manchester, and one of his pet passions was a peculiar remnant from the dawn of Britain's Industrial Revolution; the Lock 89 trapdoor on the Bridgewater Canal.  Art!

The Bridgewater

     When canals were introduced they raised transportation by a quantum level, because you could move freight in immense amounts as compared to the primitive road system of the day, and you could do it both cheaply and efficiently.  Bear in mind this is a century before the railroads begin moving lots of heavy things very quickly.

     So!  Canals are constructed from the early eighteenth century onwards, including Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell, where they are overlaid on a palimpsest (again another word you didn't expect to hear today) of the city's recent history.  This includes the River Tib, which used to run across what would become Manchester, and which was culverted and roofed over in order to be able to keep building above it - similar to a fair few rivers in The Mother Of Babylons ("London" if we're being formal).  Art!

Crediting this to Martin Zero

     That thin blue line is the River Tib, which is completely hidden from view today, and you can see where it intersects the Bridgewater Canal.  That blue circle depicts the near-legendary trapdoor.

     And what's this?  A mysterious arrow chiselled into the very masonry of the Bridgewater Canal?

     Incidentally, Conrad would caution against swimming in this canal, no matter how hot the weather.  Many, many years ago when I worked on the archaeology dig at Castlefield, some of my colleagues had (months) earlier cooled off by having a dip in the canal.  They became very ill.

     Motley!  How do you fancy a Bridgewater cocktail?

The Word Is Absard

NO!  That is not a typo or spelling mistake, it is in fact an hilarious pun worthy of the very highest appreciation, or at least an amused snicker.  As we have done here on a few occasions recently, Conrad has taken aim at three words that sound similar: Bustard, Mustard and Custard.  Now you know where this item's title comes from.  Without further ado -

"BUSTARD": WASH OUT YOUR DIRTY MINDS!   This is a species of European bird, noted for it's long legs, long neck and speckled plumage.  The name comes from Old French "Bistarde", which itself derives from the Latin "Avis Tarda", meaning "Slow Bird".  You will note the transposition of "V" to "B", which happens a lot in heritage languages - this is why the volcanoes of South-Eastern Europe gave it the name "Balkans".  Art!

It's not slow - it's deliberate

"MUSTARD": Aha, another one with a Latin root <hack spit>.  The essential mustard is a paste made from ground seeds of the plant, which used to have grape must added to it, for whatever reason, being thus known in Latin as 'Mustum' and which the Old French called "Moustarde".  Art!

"French"?  "Yellow"?
(Bites tongue REALLY HARD)

"CUSTARD": You ought to know what this is, Conrad mentioned it enough when he was making ice cream, as it forms the base for many varieties <drifts off for a moment contemplating pints and pints of home-made ice cream> ANYWAY it appears to be a Late Medieval or Early Modern transfer of description, from "Crustade" which was a type of pie.  You can well imagine someone pouring custard over a shepherds pie in 1547, and then being taken outside to be burnt as a witch.

A croustade.  Which seems to have been partially-burnt already

Dane Ault

You won't recognise this name, because I didn't and I'm incredibly better informed than you are, so let me enlighten you.  His name came up on the list of those going to be present in October in Portland, attending a screening of "The Thing" (world's scariest documentary!) and being available afterwards for signing stuff.  Art!

     Hilarious stuff indeed, using the tropes from the Second Unpleasantness in order to create mock recruiting and propaganda posters for The Empire.  Of course Conrad has no interest in serving under a skull-crushing totalitarian dictatorship (I nicked that from Philip K. Dick), but I am always open to learning from them.  Why invent the wheel when you can steal the design from somebody else?

     Dane is just one of ten artists on the Artists Signing Event in Portland this autumn, so we shall definitely revisit others on that list.

Finally -

Today I finished Peter Hodgkinson's "The Battle Of The Selle", a Helion publication that is possibly a Master's thesis which has been put forward for publication as an independent work.  It is very high-quality, being hardback, with glossy paper pages, and a series of maps in the middle that feature colour - always handy when trying to delineate lines on a map.

     "The battle of the what?" I hear you jib.  Yes, one of the last major actions fought by the armies of Perfidious Albion in the First Unpleasantness, only followed by the Battle of the Sambre.  Art!

     These are battles that are entirely absent from public consciousness about the First Unpleasantness; mention the Somme, or Passchendaele, and people will suck their teeth and mumble direly.  Mention the Selle or Sambre, and they will look at you with goggle-eyed incomprehension.  Yet - as those in the know never tire of saying - the Hundred Days campaign from August to November 1918 was a series of mighty victories achieved by the British Army that have never been  equalled before or since.  

Present in both the First Unpleasantness and "Star Wars"

     Whoops, got a bit wordy at the end there!  Chin chin old chap.

Sunday's Trawl

Can't Dawdle Or Chit-Chat -

I've got a variant of Bigos on the go.  There's no casserole beef to be had, so Conrad is making do with 14 sausages instead.  Necessity the mother of invention and all that.

     Okay, we need this evening's click-baity picture up.  Let us once more raid the archives of the pulp science-fiction magazines from way back when women needed only to look attractive and scream in terror (usually whilst wearing the ubiquitous brass bra).  Art!

     Hmmmm.  Conrad not entirely sure what's going on here, though the topless chap seems to be hurling hand grenades with wild abandon.  Given that he's out in the open and completely unarmoured, this is a rather bad idea.  The lady in the foreground seems to be both cringing in terror and covering her ears - the Pattern 36 Mills Bomb going off can indeed damage eardrums.  Presumably the lady hovering/floating/flying between the 'horns' is sinister, probably eeeeevil, as she's all in shadow.  Doubtless has blue skin and three eyes.  And - what kind of title is "The Pit Of Nympthons"?  Sounds highly dubious to me.

     ANYWAY let the show commence!

2020

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2020/05/stalker-talker.html

2019

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2019/05/i-wonder.html

2018

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2018/05/sentient-seaweed-sandwichese.html

2017

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2017/05/today-efficiency-is-key.html

2016

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2016/05/sweet-spirits-of-nitre.html

2015

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2015/05/hey-its-nathan-fillion-riding-pillion.html

2014

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2014/05/glagolitic-well-well-well.html

Twisted

No!  I Am Not Talking About The Del Amitri Album

Your Humble Scribe didn't know he had this until checking out his I-pod, and there it was.  The songs didn't sound familiar at all, so I may not have played it since purchase, whenever that was.  Art!

Twisted

     One's melon is twisted by the horrid fact that this record is 26 years old this year.  Erk.  I've got it playing in the background as I type this.

     No, what I refer to, of course - obviously! - is that Youtube 'Insider' video with the meteorologist casting an analytical eye over various disaster films, and standing in judgement on them.  Thus we come to "Twister" and today's title, pretty nifty, hmmmm?  Art!

     So.  Dave points out that this depiction of a tornado, which the South Canadians try to euphemise as a 'twister', is actually quite realistic.  This is important to those of us who don't live in South Canada, as our prospects of ever witnessing same are vanishingly remote.  This is a 'rope' variation, due to the thin dimensions of the 'funnel', and yes they do wander across the ground randomly within a footprint that tends to move from south-east to north-west.  This random, unpredictable gyration (not a word you ever expected to read today) is what makes storm-chasing tornadoes extremely dangerous.  You can see the debris being thrown up where the funnel touches ground, again realistic.  

Ignore the reflections!

     The barn getting ripped apart is, again, realistic.  That funnel has winds that move at hundreds of miles per hour.  Our heroes in the truck are actually being sensible here, seeking to get to the lowest point in the landscape; this is because the winds at ground level are the slowest thanks to friction, whereas higher up the funnel the speed increases.  David (the reviewer) did point out that the bass 'growling' of the approaching twister is unrealistic since those who have been closest and survived state it sounds more like a freight train.

"Where's my car - Oh.  Right'

     Half-realistic.  Yes, tornadoes can easily pick up and throw a half-ton car.  However, our heroes in the irrigation ditch mere feet away would also have been lofted into the atmosphere, because there's no razor-sharp delineation between tornado and placid atmosphere.

     Dave pointed out in both this film and "The Day After Tomorrow" that tornadoes are very fickle beasts and rely on a highly specific set of meteorological circumstances to occur.  If these change even slightly - poof! Twister gone.  This is why they only exist for short periods.  Thankfully!

     Okay, motley, now that the vole assassination squads have been placated by the despatch of your cloned double, we can play a game of - obviously! - Twister.

     Of course, some spots have been coated with tetrodotoxin*.

Icarus And Sunshine

Don't mention that horribly inaccurate myth to me, I don't intend to cover that.  No, we are back on the subject of what would be one of the most colossal engineering projects in human history; construction of the Icarus interstellar probe.  Quite besides it being so vast that orbital assembly alone would take decades, there's also the question of fuel.  Art!

Quite large

     Rather than chemical fuel, Icarus would use nuclear fusion (as found in the Sun) to create thrust, provided by electrically-detonating fuel pellets composed of deuterium (you remember, one of the isotopes of hydrogen) and Helium 3.  Trouble is, Helium 3 is pretty rare on Planet Earth.  Originally Project Daedalus had proposed an enormous H3 mining operation in the atmosphere of Jupiter; Icarus instead postulated the Moon as a source, which is considerably handier.  Art!

     Sheer quantity is another factor; the specs require 250 fuel pellets to be detonated every second, for years.  Conrad guessed each pellet weighed one gram <spits at metric nonsense> and came up with a total of about 25,000 tons fuel.  It turns out they need 50,000 tons of it, so each pellet can be confidently stated to mass 2 grams.  

     Glad we got that sorted out.

More Of Matte

Your Humble Scribe continues to promote the lost art of matte painting; you remember - where a painting on glass is used to fill in backgrounds that would be ridiculously expensive.  I came across a short clip from "20,000 Leagues Under The Sea" and got an illustrative photo.  Art!

     Here the submarine and sea are real; everything above that is a matte painting.  Which means the studio don't have to build a load of miniatures for a shot that lasts all of seconds.  Here's one left over from "The Day Of The Triffids".  Art!

     Conrad is pretty sure that the majority of that enormous mansion is a matte; the entrance at front and side are possibly sets, and that's it.  I cannot be positive because - gasp! - nobody seems to have done a breakdown of matte work in this film.

Finished!

Yes, my attacking the blog this afternoon was a little delayed because Your Obsessive Scribe had to finish the jigsaw or die trying.  Fortunately for my longevity, I finished it.  Art!

     Notice I did not say "completed", because there are two pieces missing.  For this puzzle Conrad did not drop the open box containing all the loose pieces on the floor, so I can say with certainty that those two pieces are absent.  The upper edge pieces proved to have been incorrectly fitted together, so my earlier bewailing was wrong.

     Now, having finished it, what to do with it next?

Finally -

We need only have a short item here to hit the Compositional Ton, so allow me to upload that photo of the errant Codeword.  Art!

"BLURB": Are you SERIOUS?  Another South Canadian slang import, and it IS South Canadian because my Collins Concise says so.  Invented by some wag back in the Forties.  ARE WE EXPERTS IN FOREIGN SLANG NOW?

"WILCO": <froths in purple apoplexy> REALLY?  In case you, gentle reader, are unaware, this is RAF slang from the Second Unpleasantness, and it's not even a proper word, it's a contraction of "Will Co-operate", usually preceded by "Roger".

"Wilcome and shoot you up"

"BOWYER": Apparently, back in the day, this was a person who made bows.  With the widespread introduction of gunpowder weapons, the bowyer became an artisan who makes sports equipment.  And I had to dig that up from Teh Interwebz, because it's SO OBSCURE IT'S NOT EVEN IN MY COLLINS CONCISE.  Bah!

"BRA":  Not even going to go there.

     And how we are done.

*  Or - have they?**

**  Yes they have.