Kyle In Style

No, No, Not This Kyle, That Kyle

Several years ago Your Humble Scribe used to enjoy watching vlogger Kyle Hill present "Because Science", where he would use scientific method, mathematics and scribbled overlays to tackle serious matters such as 'What would happen if you fell into a river of lava?'  As Conrad recalls, you would skitter about like a blob of oil on a hot skillet, not dying immediately but rather roasting away over a few seconds.  Art!

I shouldn't have to say this but DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME

     Then, suddenly, Kyle was gone.  I think the channel had come under new ownership and he didn't get on with his new bosses, so goodbye BS.

     Surprise!  Conrad was checking out Youtube for whatever reason ('Mutant speaking watermelons') and he came across a familiar name - Kyle Hill.  Art!

     Well well what the very dickens, here's Kyle where he's been all along, not doing too shabbily for himself with that number of subscribers, and in this video he was investigating what seems to be an oxymoron.  Surely one of water's chief properties is being bouyant?

     Sewage plants would have you think otherwise.  Art!

     As Kyle explained, sewage is treated by microbial action, in huge tanks that are continually agitated by air being blown through them.  This allows stuff to circulate instead of clumping in a layer on the bottom.  The supposed danger is that aerated water will not support a human body in the same was as a static body of water will, and YOU WILL SINK AND DROWN.  Art!

Kyle demonstrates.  Thank you, Kyle.

     HOWEVER - and you knew that was coming or this would have been a very short Intro - those warning signs are erring on the side of caution, because hey this is South Canada and they all love to litigate at the hint of headgear being dropped.  The actual difference in bouyancy in aerated water is about 2%, and the uplift from the air bubbles counteracts this diminution.  Don't take my word from it, people have demonstrated this in real life.  Art!

     This is a tank full of clean water, not sewage.  This chap may be daring, he's neither daft nor disgusting.
     The final nail of logic in this myth is Adam Savage; Kyle (name-dropper!) rang him up and confirmed that Mythbusters had tried this and found the air bubbles countered the decrease in bouyancy.

     The downside of all this, of course - obviously! - is that I now have another drain on my time.

     And I can only follow this Intro with another item about -

"On The  Water"

Ha!  Do you see wh - O you do.  Yes, another picture from the BBC's themed photography competition.  Art!

Courtesy Amer Latif

     This is, as per photographer Amer, an example of surface tension at play, with the safety-pin not being dense enough, and with enough surface area, to avoid breaking the water's surface.  It's a pretty cool image, though one wonders how long it took to get the pin just right and not sink to the bottom immediately.  Amer probably a very patient man.

Back To "The War Illustrated"

Because I can, before you ask.  Once again, whose blog is it?  And who had better sit and play nice for fear of my starship invasion force?  Art!

     From the top, we have the always impeccable ex-Guardsman Field Marshal Alexander sitting next to Air Marshal Coningham.  Beneath them is a picture of French citizens coming out to greet their liberators, more interested in live Allies than a rather dead Teuton.  To starboard are more locals greeting the Allies, and a British soldier who looks spectacularly ready to accept any gifts of wine, flowers and kisses that may come his way.

     The bottom two photos show the difference between the residential districts of Tunis to port, and the harbour to starboard.  Residences untouched, harbour blasted flat by bombing.  This is what you call precision bombing HINT HINT.

PoWs

     The end in North Africa.  This is a collection of mostly Italian prisoners, and though there are a lot of fed-up and dejected faces, you can pick out one or two who look quite happy.  Probably hoping they get sent to Canada not Scotland.  What was nicknamed 'Tunisgrad' permanently removed a quarter of a million Axis soldiers from their armies and rendered the north Mediterranean littoral vulnerable to invasion.

     

"Young Death: Boyhood Of A Superfiend"

Conrad has been reading old copies of "Judge Dredd: The Megazine" because "Reclaiming History" is heavy going.  One strip I've enjoyed is the macabre one in the title, which is shot through with very dark humour, making it just my cup of tea.  Art!

Artist Pete Doherty, writer Brian Skuter

     For your information, Judge Death comes from an alternative reality where life itself is seen as a crime, so he and his three companions - Fire, Fear and Mortis - killed everyone.  He makes the jump to the Big Meg thanks to technology probably acquired by explorers who got to Deathworld and never left.  The story above explains how he came to be, from his very evil young self to the supervillain we all fear and hate.  Art!

"The Sea Of Sand"

Still setting the scene BE PATIENT THE DOCTOR WILL ARRIVE - ha! do you see - O you do.  

The closer the truck and car came, the less happy he felt.  The car appeared to be painted in a camouflage scheme, meaning it belonged to the Italian Army.  The big Fiat truck behind it was definitely a military vehicle, since two soldiers sat in the back.

The car swung in behind the row of tents and came to a halt.  The driver jumped out and opened the passenger side door for an officer, who stepped out and looked around.  The truck pulled up behind the car, engine revving, until the officer waved a hand at the driver.  Once again a silence fell.

Feeling an unpleasant lump in his stomach, Roger stood and left his tent.

‘Hello?  Can I help?’ he asked the officer, who looked startled for a moment, before recovering his poise. 

‘Tenente Cabrillo,’ said the officer, giving Roger a smart salute as he strode over. 

‘Ah,’ said Roger, mentally translating “Tenente” into “Lieutenant”.  ‘Roger Llewellyn, of the Templeman-Bartolomei expedition.  What can I do for you, Tenente?’

The two soldiers had jumped down from the truck and were looking at Roger with curiosity.  Roger was deciding to try out his poor Italian when the officer spoke again.

‘This is rather embarassing, Signor Llewellyn, but I am afraid you are my prisoner,’ said the officer, with a sad smile, unholstering his pistol.

O I bet Roger never saw that happening.  Nor you either.  I told you, go look up 20/06/1940.

Finally -

So much for BOOJUM! Reviews Films.  Doing that would probably put us into 1,500 word territory and you can have too much of a good thing.  You can have too much of a bad thing, too, it's just usually the total amounts involved are very different.  Conrad could probably manage three full-size pizzas before deciding he was a bit full, whereas a single chunk of pineapple would give him the billy crims and purple wim-wams combined.

     And we are now at the Adjusted Compositional Ton, so ta-ta.

The Way To Dusty Death

I Do Apologise For Quoting Shakespeare

Seemed apt, somehow.  Okay, let us have a look at ammonium nitrate for starters.  That this stuff is potentially dangerous is evinced by the 'Nitrate' part, because humble inert nitrogen when paired with oxygen and hydrogen becomes explosive.  Very explosive.  Art!

     It's also great as a fertiliser, which is when one gets a feeling that chemistry shouldn't have such a sense of irony.  You probably recall the appalling disaster in Beirut that happened when long-neglected ammonium nitrate in storage exploded, despite warnings having been issued for years about it.  Art!

     The Lebanese authorities had absolutely no excuse for this blatant disregard, because there was an equally appalling disaster in South Canada, dating back to 1947, and also involving ammonium nitrate.  Your Humble Scribe hadn't heard of it before today, which is surprising, since it was one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history.

     It began with a ship, the SS Grandcamp.  Art!

     This baby was loaded with 2,300 tons of ammonium nitrate (only slightly less than the amount stored at Beirut), loaded by dockers who smoked like chimneys on the job.  After all, what could possibly go wrong?  It was only fertiliser, right?

     O so very wrong.  The first sign of a problem was when smoke was noticed rising from the hold the next morning, so the captain shut the hatches and crossed his fingers, because putting water on the fertiliser would cost money in lost product!

     After an hour - you are probably ahead of me here - the whole cargo went up in an enormous explosion, killing over 500 people and completely disintegrating the Grandcamp.  Art!

     The ship's anchor, which weighed two tons, was found a mile and a half away. The explosion caused lots of secondary fires and explosions, and whilst you may be thinking it can't get any worse, it did.  Enter the SS High Flyer (more dark irony), carrying 850 tons of ammonium nitrate and 1,500 tons of sulphur.  The initial explosion set the HF's cargo alight, which nobody seems to have noticed, presumably because they were all dead.  The HF exploded a couple of hours after the Grandcamp, leaving the port practically flattened.  Art!

Found a mile inland.

With puny human for scale

     It's regarded as the worst industrial accident in South Canadian history - 541 dead and 6,000 injured.  And a sterling example of why you DO NOT treat fertiliser with complacence or familiarity.

Back To "The War Illustrated" Of 1943

I suppose in any logically-arranged blog the blogger would have gone back to Volume 1 and started from scratch, not dived in at Volume 7 four years into the Second Unpleasantness.

     Well this is BOOJUM! and we sneer mockingly at logic, common sense and orderliness.  Bring on the dancing hearses!

     Allow me to explicate.  That photo at top port is of General Anderson, OC First Army, and General Omar Bradley, one of the South Canadian's better commanders, having a bit of a chinwag.   Next to it is a photo of South Canadians awaiting orders to advance, and Conrad can tell that they're using the 1903 Springfield, which was issued and used before the mighty Garand M1 came into use.  Art!

     The bottom photo is captioned "A British patrol out looking for snipers" and it doesn't look or feel staged to Your Humble Scribe.  For one thing, all their weapons are unslung, which is done when you might need to use them at a moment's notice.  Secondly, they're all keenly looking about in different directions, best practice if you're out in disputed territory.  Thirdly, the patrol leader is carrying a tommy-gun (literally - a Thompson sub-machine gun) which will throw out a death-ray of lead in the case of a contact, allowing the rest to spread out and also engage.

And Now For More Pacific Matters

Thanks to the BBC's 'On the water' theme - Ha!  Do you see what I - O you do.  Art!

Courtesy Neils Andersen

     This is one of the harbours in Greenland*, Ilullissat.  No, it doesn't normally run to as many pieces of ice as there are boats.  There had been a storm overnight, bringing pack ice into the harbour.  Whilst it may be bright and sunny, it will still take a long time for that ice to melt.  One of the pleasures of living on a continent-sized iceberg!

More Mundane Matters

As you should surely know by now, Conrad likes his food.  It is a sad fact that MI5 or UNIT will doubtless ensnare him using a trap baited with - food, for the big greedy biffer cannot resist free food <the horrid truth courtesy Mister Hand!>.

     Has that piker Mister Hand been traducing me again?  The treacherous appendage!

     ANYWAY let Art show you an artefact.

     Neat, hmmmm?  As an ex-biscuit tin it makes a fine lunchbox, with the salient feature being that it is LARGE.  Conrad needs his viands, he's a growing lad**.

"The Sea Of Sand"

I should point out that all the period-specific kit mentioned is authentic and accurate, because Conrad is 1) thorough and 2) has a library of books about the Second Unpleasantness in North Africa.

Sighing, he pushed another barrowful of sand up the spoil heap, reflecting that his puzzlement at least had the benefit of passing the time.  In an hour or so the sun would be at it’s zenith and the whole team would spend the hottest part of the day lying under canvas shelters, or make their way back to camp.

 

          Having managed to put the most recent collection of sketches in order, with annotations about them in the log book in English, schoolboy French and laborious Italian, Roger went back into his tent to lie down and read for a little while.  The sun was not yet at it’s peak and the endless vistas of level rock, dust and sand quivered and throbbed with heat.  He continued with his dog-eared volume of Keats, until boredom made him sit up again.

How dull and dead this landscape was!  The Nile valley was positively idyllic compared to this, he told himself, looking out of the unlaced tent.  Even a breeze would only stir up the fine dust outside, giving everything the appearance of being floured.  Sure enough, the winds were blowing from the north and stirring up a dirty grey blanket of grit.

‘It’s a truck!’ he exclaimed in surprise a full minute later.  ‘The supplies must be here early!’

Slowly the moving dust cloud drew nearer, trailing a long hanging plume of grey behind it.  Roger saw a small car leading the truck, making him frown.  Who could that be?  Makan Al-Jinni was so remote that there was no passing traffic.  Only those with business here ever travelled out this far – the supply truck, in the first instance.

It's a salient point that this day is 20th June 1940.  Go look it up.

Finally -

It's a good job I checked Rob's e-mail about tomorrow's tasks, since Conrad - confusingly also known as 'Rob' in the office - is off tomorrow, presumably because I'll be working Saturday.  Except I'm not down on the rota for Saturday.  Should I mention this or not?  O the agony of my moral dilemma!

     One decent thing about working on the weekend is that there is NO PHONE WORK, so I can play my music in the background.  The Mars Volta here we come!

Hairy AND scary!

*  Be advised, Greenland isn't green.

**  Mostly horizontally! <Mister Hand strikes again!>

Rocket To Russia

NO!

This is nothing about raining ICBMs down on Sinister Union 2.0 - more formally known here at BOOJUM! as 'Ruffia' - because that is A VERY BAD IDEA and you are all extremely wicked for even thinking about thinking about it.  

     Nor is it anything to do with that Ramones album, which, if Art can rouse himself from his coal-and-coke induced stupor - 

NOISE!  LOTSA NOISE!  AND GEETARS!  LOTS OF GEETARS!

     Conrad's probably heard a track or two from it, yet he was never a fan of The Ramones - SHOCK HORROR HOW CAN THIS BE! - so he's not even going to bother checking the track listings.

    O you know I can't resist.  I checked and yes, I have heard "Sheena Is A Punk Rocker", so there we are.

     Here a musical aside.  I'm playing music as I type this, because having a television program on is far too distracting and it prolongs the blog into a three-hour marathon, and the first track that came up was "I'm Not In Love" by 10 CC.  Art!  Less coal more goal!

     This was always a bit of the musical background to Your Humble Scribe, thanks to being a Number One hit, so it was a slight revelation to read how the band managed to boost three singing voices to a choir equivalent to 624 people, and realise that there's no rhythm track.  Of more interest to Conrad was the <shivers> female voice-over <slobbers lasviciously>, whom he guessed was a professional voice-artist.

     Not a bit of it!  She was Kathy Redfern, the band's secretary, who happened to pop her head into the studio whilst they were trying to determine what voice-over to use.  Art!

Kath.

     Phew!  Because that reminds me of another aside - BE PATIENT WE'RE GETTING THERE - from the original "The Andromeda Strain" where James Olson's character tries to flirt with the seductive-voiced instructor speaking over the intercom.

Dr. Mark Hall:
Sorry... Her voice is quite luscious.

Answering Service Supervisor:
Well, the voice belongs to Miss Gladys Stevens, who is 63 years old. She lives in Omaha and makes her living taping messages for voice-reminder systems.

Dr. Mark Hall:
[slightly sarcastic] Much obliged.

     Thank heavens for Kathy.

Who's laughing now, Hally?

     Where were we?

     O right.  Conrad has recently purchased the whole series of "The War Illustrated" because Bonus! and would like to invite you to admire one of his new collection*.  Art!

     In rather better nick than the old charity-shop edition I had.  Note, too, that this one has the Index, which some <loud swearing> had torn out of the C-SE.  Here you can see the cover picture of edition 156, with an archetypically cheerful Tommy escorting a party of Teuton prisoners.  Most look a bit glum, apart from that chap on the right, who seems quite happy to be a PoW.  Decent food, medical care and not having to risk death on a daily basis, one supposes.  Art!

     Take notice of the upper port photograph, and what seems to be a Hurricane fighter balanced on a stair-lift.  This is actually a Catapult-Armed Merchantman, which we have covered before, but not for ages.  The Hurricane is kept on deck of a freighter, which is part of one of the convoys to the Sinister Union in the days before Perfidious Albion had enough aircraft carriers to send as escort.  The Hurri will be 'launched' if any Teuton recon aircraft come stooging around, thanks to being mounted on a rocket-sled.  It takes off at 1,500 m.p.h. and intercepts said Teuton aircraft, shoots it down and then -

     Ditches in the sea as close to a ship as possible, pilot crossing his fingers manfully that he gets picked up before freezing to death.  Art!

On wings of fire, hmmm?

     Conrad has to wonder who on earth they got to test this infernal devices, and how much gin they had to ingest before getting into the cockpit.

     So, maybe only a Rocket Towards Russia, but close enough for our intent.

Rather Less Rambunctious

At least I hope so, I've typed out the title without checking the picture first.  Yes, we are back on the BBC's 'On The Water' theme, so if Art won't mind doing the business - 

Courtesy Katherine Wilkins

    This is the photographer's daughter having a paddle in wellington boots of dubious waterproof value.  She will have noticed how cold the water is, since this in the depths of winter.

"The Sea Of Sand"

Good or bad, there's about twice the word-count present here as compared to "Tormentor", and we're only just getting into the beginning.  Setting the scene is important to proper authors, and Conrad too.

The absence of any style or decoration puzzled him, too.  No heiroglyphs, no pictograms, not lettering or embellishment of any sort.  It was possible that applique decorations had originally been painted onto the black material, and been worn away, revealing the starkly functional architecture.  No personality, that was how he defined it.  Nothing but what was strictly necessary.

          Overall, the site so far demonstrated that same lack of personality.  Normally on a dig there were finds, artefacts, remnants of the builder’s lifestyle or the people who used the buildings.  Not here.  Not so much as a single pot sherd had come to light.  Fulgoni didn’t believe that the six Egyptian and two Libyans had absconded with armfuls of relics, whatever Professor Templeman might say, as a reason the site had been bare.  One welcome change from every other site in the desert he’d visited, and Cairo too for that matter, was the absence of flies.  The absence of flies he could put up with in this strange collection of buildings.

          And the scale!  The size of the steps leading up to the interior of The Temple meant an undignified scramble by the expedition members.  Finally Professor Templeman refused to embarrass his dignity (and his considerable size) any longer and a wooden scaffold had been erected, when the Egyptians were still around to build it.  Steps so large a man would have to be a giant to use them. 

      O what can this mean?  Demons?  Aliens?  Prehistoric super-civilisations?  You'll just have to keep reading to find out.

It's My Calling.  It's My -

As we should all realise by now, Conrad is one of those saddoes who peruse the product aisles in supermarkets for pun-worthy pictures.  Don't carp at this, we've not bothered with the chemical contents of shampoo for an age.  Art!

Eye-catching design

     I have no idea what it will taste like.  The only beers that I refuse to drink, on the grounds that cocoa can be cack, are those with a chocolate flavour.  If I do buy one of those I may palm it off on Darling Daughter or Quiet Tom.  Heh.

Finally -

I keep forgetting about those remaindered crumpets.  DOG BUNS!  I hate having to throw out bread products when they go mouldy.  Methinks I shall have to forego today's porridge and indulge in six crumpets with Marmite-flavoured peanut butter.  That will be a Breakfast Of Champions indeed - MFPB has a filling quality beyond it's merely physical presence on your toast.

And with that, Vulnavia, we are O so very done.

*  I have 8 books lined up already to give away in order to satisfy the One-In One-Out principle

Conrad: A Victim Of Gin

Hmmmmm Perhaps

After all, I am getting on a bit.  248 years old at last count, thanks to my peculiar alien physiology.  Hey, what can I say, I come from an ice-world in the constellation <redacted> and the star <redacted> where our metabolism is a lot slower than yours, and we live a lot longer in the service of our wonderful <description of skull-crushing totalian dictatorship redacted>.

     That, or gin. Art!

     

"It's not Gordon's, it's MINE!"

     You see, when Your Humble Scribe was off busy creating words of wit, wisdom and weltanschaung, it was a matter of wonder that my traffic figures would mysteriously increase.  I'd be at 3 visitors before crafting a long link-filled blog, and then find my traffic had shot up to as many as 4!  Or even 5!

Happy happy Conrad

     Okay, okay, from perhaps 11 to 24.  

     'What can this mean?' I asked myself - aloud, since we were at home in The Mansion and there was no risk of frightening passers-by.  'How can people out there know EXACTLY when I am going to be composing deathless prose, and log on to appreciate it?"

     Doubtless you are ahead of me here, gentle reader.  Do forgive an old man's gin-inflected grey matter after a journey of 190 light years in suspended animation with his blood replaced by anti-freeze.  Art!

     For those of you who like to keep track, we are still at 73 Ruffian visitors, meaning that the FSB only got to 3 people overnight; unless they took themselves out of the tracker, because Biter Bit and all that ki

     ANYWAY 'What can it mean?' I'll tell you what it meant.  Your Humble Scribe had been COUNTING HIS OWN VISITS TO THE BLOG.  I had disabled this function years ago, yet it must have come unglued, so I went back in and disabled it again.  FINALLY we shall be getting accurate traffic stats.

     Which today stand at 95 hits.  Not bad for a Monday!

O go on then.  Just a snifter or five.

     

Only Slightly Related

Conrad, sitting up in his Sekret Layr*, has a splendid view across the high hill country, all the way over to Oldham Edge, and one thing I notice absent today is wind.  Yesteryon the trees were threshing around like triffids on amphetamine sulphate, today they are utterly lank.  This also means the skies are covered with 10/10ths cloud cover, as the Brylcreem Boys would have it.

     So!  Let us import a picture of a beer can.  Art?

     "Do you have a vocation?"

     "Yes actually I have six of them!"

     Collapse of Stout party and retention to an Ukranian corner.

     Wibble wibble dibble dibble.

If none of this makes sense you need to inhale more Jeyes Household Cleaning Fluid.

Conrad Takes His Frothing Nitric Ire For A Walk

After all, everyone can do with a bit of exercise, can't they?

     Let us now deploy Ferocious Fantabulisms in search of Codeword compilers, because they need tracking down and ELIMINATING.   

"INVEIGHS": Ah me yes I remember trying to define this word to Janice, who hailed from Cameroon and whom had an excellent English vocabulary.  "To speak with violent or invective language".  Obscure and obsolescent to say the least.  You will have seen innumerable examples of 'Inveighing' here on BOOJUM!, usually against the Codeword Compilers, so we can define this as pretty much Business As Usual.  Art!

"A superglue accident caused an episode of inveigh"

"AXIAL":  That is, 'along the axis of -' and Your Humble Scribe is O so familiar with this term because of his unhealthy obsession with TANK.  You the girning public are probably less aware.  Art!

     Here we have a Matilda II, as loathed and hated by the Axis in North Africa during the Second Unpleasantness.  You can see the mighty two-pounder gun, which rendered many an Axis tank into Swiss cheese - and alongside that, on the same axis, is a machine-gun.  Hence co-axial.  If the turret crew came across a target that did not deserve Death By Two-Pounder, why then they would belabour it with machine-gun fire from the CO-AXIAL.

"QUANGO":  YOU WHAT!  THIS - <pauses to draw breath and calm down> This solution refers to <still gritting teeh> 'Quasi-Autonomous National Government Organisation" and it is an ACRONYM!

     I think I'd better change subjects before I spontaneously combust out of sheer rage.

Francophone On A Piping Drone

If you have been keeping track AND YOU SHOULD HAVE then you will realise that we here at BOOJUM! have been replicating editions from "The War Illustrated" and posting them, all the while at least two weeks behind the real events, in order to avoid giving any useful information to the Axis.  Which is a contemporary comment on what's going on in U

     ANYWAY - 

     Here we have bagpipers from the 52nd Highland division, who are playing with their TAM'O SHANTER not 'beret' thank you very much, being studied by curious French citizens whom have never encountered a dudlesack at close range.  I do notice one lady ramming her hands against ears - ah what the Kreplach! you can't make people like bagpipes**.

"The Sea Of Sand"

I do beg your pardon!  Here we are into the meat of the matter and the Scatter My Data post is still unposted.  Let us bring forth the squorth:

Di Fellica nodded back over the way they had come, where sand slid down to fill their footprints.

          ‘I’d prefer to be where the boy is,’ he said, using their nickname for the young graduate.

          ‘He might have vanished too, when we get back,’ said Fulgoni, only half-joking.  ‘Ah, we’re wanted.’  Doctor Bartolomei waved them forward.

          ‘Gentlemen,’ he said.  ‘We are going to take down the overburden on the second pylon.  Can you set up a path with wooden planking for the wheelbarrows?  Take it out to the eastern spoil heap.’

          Thus began several hours of toil, moving tons of sand from around the pylon.  Gradually the tapering column emerged from the concealing sands, and Fulgoni studied it with a practiced eye.  Whilst he might lack the depth of Templeman’s experience or Bartolomei’s knowledge about archaeology, his degree in Classical Antiquities gave him an insight.  He chatted to Di Fellica whilst they sweated, not feeling like conversing with the sullen French duo: Templeman and Doctor Bartolomei would undoubtedly not wish to hear his musings.

          What did he know about this unquiet site?  Firstly, the black pylons did not exhibit any wear or erosion.  Not even at their tips, where they had been exposed to the elements for God alone knew how many years.  Naturally the shroud of the overburden would have protected them once covered over, yet they stood as if their mysterious builders finished contruction only yesterday.  What were they made of?  The material looked like polished jet, glossy and dark, but it resisted the picks and hammers used to take samples.  Fulgoni suspected it of being a vitreous enamel coating, perhaps similar to that used in the vitrified hill forts in Northern Europe.  Likewise, the massive bulk of The Temple stood pristine, untouched by the literal and metaphorical sands of time.

     Ooooh Creepy-Pasta time!

Finally -

I think we're pretty much done here.  All that remains is to terrify, torment and titillate our Ruffian members with new nicknames for the Puffy Petrol Pimp.  <thinks hard> this one won't work unless you pronouce it in English: Pooh Tin - and then look to ascribe it,

*  The only typographical error we allow here.  Just so you know.

**  If only, if only.

Ooops

I Stayed Up Far Too Late Last Night

In my defence, it was to complete "The Sea Of Sand" because I'd written it so long ago that the details had become obscure.  I kept looking at the clock and thinking 'O this means I'll be starting the blog really late' which changed over time into 'O I don't intend to be still writing this at 01:30'.

     And so here we are.  Art!  Click-baity picture!

"Vampires ripped my flesh"

     Hmmmmmm.  Nope.  Bats are nocturnal, or at best crepuscular, NOT diurnal.  So we're going to pass on that cover and move on to links.

2021

BOOJUM!: Warily Dipping A Talon In Political Waters (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2020

BOOJUM!: This Version's An Infinite Recursion (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2019

BOOJUM!: Sorry - More Sinful Pride! (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2018

BOOJUM!: I've Been So Mean - To Astatine (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2017

BOOJUM!: Back With A Ban (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2016

BOOJUM!: Give An Inch, Take a Yard (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2015

BOOJUM!: Sixteen Thirty One? (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2014

BOOJUM!: Blue Skies And Sunshine - Conrad Is Very Cross! (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

Dirty Projectors

Yes, I Thought I Was Right

Conrad remembers this South Canadian rock band being mentioned a geological age ago on the BBC's website, possibly as being a band to watch as they were going places.  I don't have anything by them, not even on a compilation album, so I'm going to have to tackle Youtube and see if it can provide.  Art!

     Hmmmmm possibly a bit lightweight, but then not everybody can be bonkers prog-metal mathcore (The Mars Volta I'm looking at you).  They are a passion project of founder David Longstreth and have been around since 2002, only really hitting the big(ish) time in 2009.

     ANYWAY none of that is what I wanted to talk about in this Intro, since I have come across mention in my notes taken from "Seeking Victory" about the LIVENS PROJECTOR!

     No, Vulnavia.  Nothing to do with films or film reels.  I think we need to get Art's attention with a steel ball-bearing fired from a catapult.

     O go rub an ice cube on it, Art.  The LP was a simple large bore mortar, fired electrically by the hundred or thousand by the Special Brigade or Royal Engineers of Perfidious Albion in the First Unpleasantness.  They were intensely disliked by the Teuton infantry because a single LP cylinder contained thirty pounds of gas, and the Special Brigade could prep over a thousand of them per day.  They could deliver an enormous amount of gas very quickly and with nil warning, meaning that the Teutons had to have special 'Luki-luki' sentries posted to watch for the tell-tale sign of a thousand-plus Projectors being fired.  Art!

     

     Thus Perfidious Albion - the clue is in the title - learned to put their Projectors in dead ground, where they couldn't be seen.  And to fire them at night, just to be even more hateful.  They could create a concentration of gas so heavy that it overwhelmed the Teuton gas masks, in which case their trenches would be manned by the dead (not very sporting and not at all cricket).

     The LP could also be charged with other harmful fillings, like oil or thermite, which were great at setting anything flammable ablaze.  Like woods.  on 04/06/1917 the Special Brigade fired 1,200 oil drums at Grande Bois and Wytschaete woods, which caught fire.  The Teuton defenders, the 33rd Fusilier Regiment, reported utter panic breaking out thanks to their locale becoming a bonfire and they in the middle of it.  Art!

Captain Livens

     In another demonstration that the British in war can be as un-gentlemanly as the next chap, the Special Brigade used their incendiary Livens shell upon the hapless Teutons another 23 times over the next six months.  You can bet your supple leather boots that by September the Teuton stubble-hoppers were calling the Livens a Dirty Projector, and probably harsher words than that, too.

     Which is where this evening's title comes from.  What, is Art still whinging?  Put a bit of Sudofed on it, you whining piker.

     Chin chin!

Let's Have A Little Culture

Charles Marion Russell, to be exact.  You know, the South Canadian artist who portrayed the Old West on canvas.  We've not had one of his prints up for a while, so here we go.  Art!

"Trail Of The Iron Horse" circa 1924

     I can tell you exactly what the chap with the spear is saying to his mates.

     "We are living in the future," with a puzzled expression, because he's go no idea what railway tracks are for.  Better not still be in that place when the 3:10 to Yuma goes by, Dancing Weasel.  It's quite an evocative scene, two cultures clashing without realising.

"On The Water"

Our second example of this theme from the BBC's photography exhibition, which is great for Conrad as it takes a bit of the heavy creative lifting from his shoulders, and one assumes the Beeb has already carried out due diligence and quality control.  Art!

Courtesy Alex Ashby

     This is from Sai Kau harbour in Hong Kong, where that gentlemen was making an unsteady way to shore over a collection of small boats.  We hope he made it without getting a ducking.  And I'm adding this last sentence in to hit the 700 words mark.

"The Spider"

You will recall, if you know what's good for you, that Conrad graced an earlier BOOJUM! with a cover from the pulp magazine "The Spider", despite not knowing anything whatsoever about it.  Art!

     I don't give matey good odds here - that's two men with guns, another with a dagger and mister upstairs with a cleaver.  And if Spider - for I presume it is he - is reduced to clubbing a villain with the butt of his gun, then he's out of ammunition.

     ANYWAY It transpires that TS was big news in the Thirties, and the magazine remains verrrrry collectible.  The Spider is actually Richard Wentworth, an independently wealthy man of means, who decides to take the law and justice into his own hands and fight crime.  The operative word here is 'fight', because Ol' Rick wasn't about to chicken out or pansy around.  No, he intended to stamp out crime, and if this meant stamping criminals into a sticky red smear - he was fine with that.  The criminals were also extremely violent with absolutely no regard for human life, frequently killing or murdering thousands of innocent people.  You can understand Rick's reluctance to let them keep on living. Art!

Master of men.  Women?  That remains to be seen.

     Conrad wonders if any of these are available in the public domain.  One to check on after publishing this blog ...

"The Sea Of Sand"

Where were we?  Sorry, it's just that I've read far ahead of where we are in what's been published online.  Hang on -

He stood, alongside the others, at the rim of a vast, shallow bowl in the desert fully a mile across, in the middle of which lay the buildings excavated so far, and giant rolling billows of sand that hinted at other constructions hidden under the yellow drifts.  Makan Al-Jinni.  The enormous rectangular black building dubbed “The Temple” was the only one completely uncovered, standing fifty feet tall atop a podium that was itself thirty feet high.  Massive pillars held up the roof, and equally massive steps led up each face of the podium.  Further into the bowl lay the partially un-covered circular construction, which Templeman and Bartolomei dubbed “The Dais”.    Standing erect from the multi-hundred ton mass of The Dais was the feature that had originally attracted attention in this desolate spot, the tapering black pylon.  Much of the overburden had been removed from this part of the structure, leaving a mass of sand still lying around the base.  Fifty yards away another pylon, identical to it’s more apparent brother, showed less than half its height through the layers of sand. 

          Wheelbarrows creaking and squeaking, the group made their way down the slope to the planked walkway and into the bottom of the shallow depression, Fulgoni casting a last longing look at the sky behind.  Every member of the troupe seemed to bow their shoulders once they lost sight of the dune sea.  A stillness and silence hung over the abandoned buildings, made heavier by the passing of countless centuries since people had walked or worked here.  Only Professor Templeman seemed entirely ignorant of the atmosphere, stoutly proclaiming that work today ought to begin on further removing overburden from the second pylon.  Doctor Bartolomei disagreed urbanely and a discussion took place whilst others took tools from the barrows and waited for a decision.  

     There you go, a bit more mise en scene established.  Hopefully the creepy nature of this site comes through.

Finally -

We've hit the Adjusted Compositional Ton already, so I shall keep this brief.

     There you go, promise kept.