Yes, You Read That Correctly
No! This is not a veiled reference to Ruffians and Borcs, even if there is a bonkers advert out there that tries to put a positive gloss on living in their miserable North-Korea-Writ-Larger pariah state. Art!
Hay Pesto! here's the Sanjak of Novi Pazar, a statelet within Serbia, which now has a GDP ten times bigger than the Ruffians. Let's prod Art with this handy cattle prod and bring him awake -
ANYWAY I meant the 'real' Mordor, from what people call Tolkein's 'Legendarium', meaning not merely "The Lord Of The Rings" but also "The Hobbit" and "The Silmarillion", which amounts to a tremendous amount of words. I salute In Deep Geek for his careful sifting through oceans of text to bring illumination to us folk who have full-time jobs. Art!
Mordor to lower starboard
You can see instantly what made Sauron fall in love with the place; it's bounded on three sides by mountain ranges, making it ridiculously difficult to assail and easy-peasy to defend. Now, what you and Frodo are both focussed on is the Plateau of Gorgoroth, in the upper port of the map. Let me see if a repeat prod will produce results from Art -
It's not a nice place. For one thing, Orodruin, better known as 'Mount Doom', is always belching forth flames and, most especially, ash and smoke. "Mordor" is the Elvish Sindarin word for "Land of the Shadow", after all. The PoG itself is riven with mines and forges and craters and spoil heaps and noxious fumes, nothing grows there AT ALL. Art!
However - and you knew that word was coming, didn't you? - all that volcanic ash has a benefit. The southern portion of Mordor is called Nurn, and prevailing winds have carried volcanic ash there for millenia. Art!
The soil is extremely fertile and the Sea of Nurnen provides water for irrigation; this region is where Sauron's slaves toil in agricultural labour in order to provide food for the orc hordes. There is a third region within the Land of the Shadow, namely - Art!
Lithlad, by gad
This area doesn't get the benefit of fertile, ash-enriched soil, so it's not as green and pleasant as Nurn; on the other hand, it's not a foul barren rocky wasteland, either, so not all bad.
There you have the unseen Mordor, which their Tourist Board would do well to emphasise, because there's only so many people who are willing to do Extreme Walking In A Poisonous Wilderness, nor are there that many vulcanologists willing to visit a dangerously active volcano.
Cheaty McBeaty
Another short exploit of Smokey Yunick, a man who was mechanically gifted, surpassingly sly and probably not a man to play poker with.
As a NASCAR mechanic he was hired by Richard Petty, whom I'd never heard of before, to get more miles out of his car. art!
Richard having a sit
Richard is one of the most successful NASCAR drivers of all time, and part of that success was down to Smokey. Since the judges, marshalls and referees had discovered his sneaky trick with a basketball, he had to get creative, which he did. Art!
That's the normal diameter of a Pontiac fuel line. Art!
That's how long they are. Smokey realised that fuel lines weren't regulated, so he took 11 feet of 2-inch fire hose and used that for Richard's Pontiac, which meant the car got an additional 5 gallons of fuel, until the marshalls caught on and banned it.
Inventive chap.
More of Ned's Atomic Dustbin ...
The band, not The Goon Show script, which in fact refers to an ANTI-atomic dustbin, thank you very much. My pal Richard, now retired in Spain (jammy get!) put a Comment in on the blog, as he occasionally does RICHARD'S DESCENDANTS WILL AVOID ORGAN-DONATION OR URANIUM MINING when my starship invasion fleet gets here. Art!
Allow me to add-in his words:
"The Sea Of Sand"
We jump away from exotic alien locales and desperate desert battles to the orderly calm hundreds of miles away.
Seventeen: Both Ends Versus the
Middle
The neatly–dressed sergeant
sitting at the radio desk with his headphones on looked up then shook his head
at Major Hampson when the latter entered the room. The radio log contained only a few routine
messages, nothing at all from the Depot at Martuba.
‘Nothing
doing, sir,’ apologised the sergeant.
‘I’ve tried every twenty minutes for the past three hours.’
‘Still
no joy, eh?’ commented Hampson. ‘It’s
not looking very rosy.’
Outside
a train whistle tooted mournfully, becoming fainter as the locomotive pulled
away from the railhead at Mersa Matruh.
Hampson
felt worried, without showing it in front of the sergeant.
‘Could
it be atmospherics?’ he asked. Reception
in the desert could be the very devil.
Once they had picked up the guttural exchanges of German units on
manouevres in the Balkans, and occasionally picked up snatches from naval
convoys in the Med.
‘Doubt
it, sir. I’ve been in touch with
Benghazi and Tobruk, reception’s a bit crackly but no problem otherwise.’
Damn
it! What the hell was going on down there? mused Major Hampson.
First
came a report from Middle East HQ, Brigadier Dorman-Smith no less, saying that
his own private band of desert pirates, Jolyon Force, had fought a battle with
infernal devices of Italian design.
Fought it in the middle of the supply depot at Martuba, mind you. Lots of casualties, including dozens of
Italian prisoners.
Well, gentle readers, we know, don't we?
What's In A Word?
It rather depends what language you're talking about. "Seol-Jeep" in Korean means a type of hostelry that sells their equivalent of 'pub grub' and alcoholic beverages. Art!
You'll have to imagine the beer
Another Korean word, 'Maripkan', went out of use in the sixth century, being substituted by the Chinese word 'Wang' NO SNIGGERING AT THE BACK!
Korean words for philosophical terms also came into use for government departments, inspired by Confuscianism, such as "Chung" for 'Loyalty'*. There was "In" for "Benevolence", "Ui" for "Righteousness", "Chi" for "Wisdom" and "Sin" for "Honesty". Go on, there's at least a couple of jokes in there. Conrad thinks that these are loan-words from the Chinese and wonders where "Kim Chee" arrived from, O thou wise cabbage and radish dish**.
There you go, we're all better informed than we were five minutes ago. All part of the service.
Finally -
Hmmmmm dangerous times for the Iranian theocratic dictatorship, who have been challenged by the protests that have been taking place for the past 70 days. Now, apparently, their entirely immoral 'Morality Police' are being disbanded, which is a concession they may come to regret. Protesters seeing change being caused by their bolshiness, not remotely bothered by the state's instant resort to mass murder, may become even bolder.
Of course - obviously! - Peter The Average is looking on in a state of mild panic, as he can't get his chug-chug drones from anywhere else.
* Sorry, couldn't resist
** Darling daughter was banging on about how Kim Chee kills millions from botulism. Well, yes, but they were human, weren't they?
