Six of one.

Or why this is America's 5/11.

This is a brief bit about the capital riots that happened back in January. Where a bunch of Qanon types did a guided tour of the capitols finest sites before nicking a lectern and AOC's shoes.

Of course some people died in this and such, which is bad, but no more than those that died in the George Floyd riots last summer, and with a lot less looting and burning. My main one take away from this is the little old lady standing there and the people in queues lining up.

The more I think about it, the more I get a whole Guy Fawkes vibe from it all. For those not British, Guy Fawkes was a Catholic who plotted to blow up parliament, but was caught and as of the order of the day executed. A holiday was set up where you would construct a bonfire, and set off fireworks. 

This morphed into a month long firework fest through the whole of October with a Guy made of old rags and you would ask money from passers by (i.e. a penny for the guy) before it got put on the bonfire to burn. No child has done this since the mid 90's sadly as Halloween has risen in importance since then.

If you think about it, it was a failed coup in the same vein, but with out the hanging and drawing as such. Maybe we could encourage Americans to embrace it the next year by going on guided tours and nicking lecterns.

Plane crash Holiday.

 Where were you when the planes hit the twin towers? It's twenty years ago that the planes hit and not that any one really wanted to know, I'll tell you exactly where I was, when I first heard.

It was about 3pm when I heard via work radio, that the twin towers had been hit. We had two way radios to keep in touch with and with a 3pm tea break, as we worked longer hours then, we were sitting down to a cuppa and some banter, the kind when you get a bunch of blokes together when we got a call through.

I've just heard the tail end of the news, a jet plane has just gone into the world trade center.

We of course switch on the radio and its a full bulletin of how a bunch of terrorists had committed a mass atrocity in the name of their fruity little religion.

Haunted Forts

 Another Hardy Boys book upload for you to enjoy. It's the UK version of The Haunted Fort, in which our chums head out Chet's uncle's place in Cedartown, in order to track down the legendary treasure of Fort Senandaga, a revolutionary war era fort on the lake.

It's not a bad tale either, Chet's uncle runs an art school and of course, Chet's hobby, this time is painting, which he has some flair for. There is a vague supernatural element as there is a lake monster (fake though) in the lake set up as an elaborate prank to harass local art critic Chanucey Gilman (rendered as Oilman in the file I had). 

The other players in this are an old English hermit living on one of the lake islands who claims that the redcoats are the last to leave the fort, whereas a Frenchman, Rene Follette claims that the French forces were the last to leave the fort. Add in Mr. Davenport, eccentric owner of the fort and art thief Alan Copler (rendered as copier in the text file I have.) and you have quite the good story.

The story itself centers around a clue in a picture painted by the mysterious prisoner painter, interred in the fort around the time of the revolutionary war of 1776. There is a clue to a fabulous treasure in one of the paintings, one of which is housed in the Bayport museum and is of course stolen by Copler, in the course of the adventure. 

You can read more here.

Chatham

Took a trip out to Chatham today, a place I've never been to before. A place that had a  proud naval history that is now long gone. I know that there are plenty of places that are worse, Croydon and Woolwich for one but Chatham seems to be one of those places where its just vaguely depressing. 

It's not multicultural and run down like Croydon, or just a shit hole that Woolwich is. Or smug and left wing shithole like Hackney with no proper shops. It has a Smiths and Poundland for christ sakes, its a proper high street.

No, I think its just a lot of people on electric scooters riding round that have put me off. A general twat chariot, for road men and dealers. Most of the pound shops were shut, they did have a gadget shop selling over priced records, but they did have modern stuff even if you needed discogs app to tell you what it is.

To make matters worse we wanted to go to Maidstone but got lost, so this is the compromise trip instead. Hopefully Maidstone is better. If we ever go.

Hiatus

 This was supposed to be a hiatus of such. On Wednesday we were meant to be going to Benalmadena, on the Costa Del Sol but thanks to SARS 2 electric boogaloo, we had our holiday cancelled not once but twice. I've just got done cancelling our parking reservations for the airport and with any luck we'll get a refund.

Now all I have left is a shed load of leave that I've not cancelled and maybe I can get some scanning done and the conservatory cleaned out. It's not what I wanted to do but seeing as the alternative is a staycation which is pricey. Then a bunch of projects seems much more worthwhile.

In fact, thanks to the amount of forest fires going on across the med, mostly Greece and Italy and a massive incursion of what can be called murder heat (50oF 120oC near enough recorded in the past week alone). Maybe its not such a bad idea after all.

Disappearing floors and files.

 I thought I had a post to this already but I have finally uploaded the UK version of The Disappearing Floor a legendary train wreck of a story in its original form. 

You know what also disappeared, the PDF of The mystery of Cabin Island, as we found out that the final chapter is missing from the original, so we've  taken it down.

Also I've placed and received an order for the original and there is a nice coincidence as it came yesterday which I'll share.

Our copy came from World of books down on the Sussex coast along with Secret of the Caves. It has a library label in it from Greenwich library in Greenwich which is not a million miles away from us here and to make it worse it was stored at the Metropolitan Joint Fiction Reserve at Plumstead which happened to be our local library. 

Weirdly it feels like its come home, so will have to scan and OCR it to give you a proper PDF of this.

Anyway the Disappearing floor.

Its strange one in the original where the boys deal with, bank robbers, strange Wilhelm Reich style cultists and a crazy mansion where the floors move and the laws of electricity are disregarded. Poor old Fenton gets attacked by tigers and shocked by untold amount of volts from Aden Darrow's machines.

The remake cuts down on most of the craziness, relegating the tiger bites to Tiger's Bight a small bay in Barmet. Our bank robbers have become jewel thieves and the story flows a lot better for it.

You can read both of them, here and here

Porn for kids.

 Here is a thing. A lot of galaxy brained weirdos are going on about pron for children. Dedicated soft core stuff. Whether it's an MP's daughter or Radio 4's Women's Hour. They are all pro this sort of stuff.

It doesn't horrify me as much as all the other people commenting on this, basically its been my one mainstay growing up and through adulthood. What they seem to be advocating is the old jazz mags in the hedge type of pron we used to get, growing up in the 80's and 90's in the UK before hardcore was really allowed here.

How much better would it be if we could sit down and basically cover this in sex ed without some God freaks going off on one about thinking of the children. Telling kids that porn is OK but not remotely real life and that, and to generally respect your partner.