The Wardman Wire

Tim Irelands blog is back on the air (Hat-tip to Chris Paul ), but for all the Usmanov and Schillings Schenanigans and Schemozzle (=”disorder resulting from a failure to behave predictably”) you still need to keep an eye on the temporary site.

However, since it’s mid-afternoon and we are having cups of tea I have grabbed a screenshot of the test page before they took it away. This reveals three things:

1 - It is working.

2 - Something of the sense of humour of Geeks.

3 - This test page was created by somebody with marketing experience - otherwise he would have stopped at two.

Unless…

The only other possibility is that he borrowed Hitler’s spare testicle.

And since you’re all probably supposed to be working, I thought we’d have a Trivia Diversion.

Hitler Has Only Got One Ball

Here are the full lyrics of the “Balls to Hitler” song, sung to the “Colonel Bogey March” tune:

Hitler, he only had one ball,
Goering, he had two but very small,
Himmler had something simmler,
But poor old Goebbels had no balls at all.
Whistle Chorus:

Frankfurt has only one beer hall,
Stuttgart, die München all on call,
Munich, vee lift our tunich,
To show vee ‘Cherman’ have no balls at all.
Whistle Chorus:

Hans Otto is very short, not tall,
And blotto, for drinking Singhai and Skol.
A ‘Cherman’, unlike Bruce Erwin,
Because Hans Otto has no balls at all.
Whistle Chorus:

Hitler has only got one ball,
The other is in the Albert Hall.
His mother, the dirty bugger,
Cut it off when he was small.
Whistle Chorus:

In case you are planning a sing-song, here is the real (military band) music (Source):

If you prefer to have your computer play it to you, here is the MIDI file. If this sounds bad you need a new computer.

and if you are a masochist (definiton three) not a militarist here are two completely barking versions from the media repositary at the Internet Archive:

First a bluegrass version (known as “Colonel Bogey Breakdown”):

and one in … er … Jewish Polka style (known as “Oy! Colonel Bogey!” - I kid you not)

(Note for Audio Geeks: “Oy! Colonel Bogey” is supposed to sound like that - the sample rate on that MP3 is 22.05 kHz. It is not the chipmunk effect).

Colonel Bogey

The original Colonel Bogey March was apparently written in celebration of a pre-First World War officer who played golf (Source: Music and Vision):

It is of course a fine march whose opening has proved totally irresistible for the best part of a century. Its composer was Lieutenant F J Ricketts (1881-1945), a military bandmaster who was Director of Music for the Royal Marines at Plymouth. Because at that time Service personnel were not encouraged to have professional lives in the great big world outside, Ricketts published ‘Colonel Bogey’ and his other compositions under the pseudonym Kenneth Alford.

So much for the composer — but who in fact was Colonel Bogey? The story goes that this was a nickname by which a certain fiery colonel was known just before the 1914 War when Ricketts was stationed at Fort George near Inverness in Scotland. One of the composer’s recreations was playing golf and it was on the local course that he sometimes encountered the eccentric colonel. One of the latter’s peculiarities was that instead of shouting ‘Fore’ to warn of an impending drive, he preferred to whistle a descending minor third. This little musical tag stayed and germinated in the mind of the receptive Ricketts — and so the opening of a memorable march was born.

Wrapping-up

And now. Ah. Work. Must do some work.

Craig Murray is also back up, but only at his reserve site. His main site was hacked a few hours before it was due to come back on line.

Read about the details at the Atlantic Free Press:

Murray found a new home for his website, when our main man Rich stepped into the breach, offering to host the site on his server, in defiance of oligarchical bluster. This new Murray site was due to launch on Monday, October 1; but lo and behold, Rich’s server was hit by the hacker firebomb on Sunday, September 30 – just hours before the Murray site was to go live. Certainly an interesting juxtaposition of events, to say the least.

And that really is it for this article.

Tags: bloggerheads, colonel bogey, tim ireland, craig murray, military march, schillings, alisher usmanov, usmanov, free speech, libel laws[tags]bloggerheads, colonel bogey, tim ireland, craig murray, military march, schillings, alisher usmanov, usmanov, free speech, libel laws[/tags]