THROW THE MONEY INTO THE VOLCANO!

I Apologise (A Little) For All Caps

The title is one I came up with myself when watching either The Critical Drinker or Ryan Kinel's "Outpost" on Youtube, when they go to town on a studio - Disney is usually the target for their thunderbolts - which has spawned yet another box office disaster.  I refer you to TCD's list of reasons why Hollywood makes so many awful films, which is quite cogent and well-argued.  Art!

     This is Ryan frankly gloating about how badly Indy 5 was doing at the box office, with a budget of $387 million plus another $100 in promotion and advertising, meaning it lost about $300 million in total.  The P & A and distribution costs are often ignored by those trying to tot up profit and loss on pictures, so bear that in mind.     Art!

   

     Thus Conrad's crack about the studio taking a shipping container, cramming it full of hundred-dollar bills, taking it underslung 'neath a Chinook and dumping it into Vatnajokull's broiling caldera.  Art1

     This would be an elegantly simple solution, cutting out all the expensive, time-consuming nonsense about making a film in between getting a script and tying up post-production CGI. Money-container-volcano-ashes.  Simples!

     "To what do we owe this acerbic commentary on the South Canadian film industry, Conrad, O thou irredeemable cynic?" I hear you cry.

     I thought you'd never ask!  Because I came across an item on the browser feed, which is irresistible to a horrid old curmudgeon like myself.  Art!

     Buckle in, I'm not sure how long this Intro will be, just that it will involve a whole 'Ever Ace' of money-stuffed containers by the time we're through, and to keep things manageable I shall only total up the Disney films, which might make the House of Mouse grouse.  Art!

     The blurb that led into the article did caution that the box office totals had been adjusted for inflation, so these are now 2024 totals, not from when the film was released back in the day.  Art!

THE 13TH WARRIOR 1999: Lost $227 million.    Only for those who cannot bear to miss films featuring a cod-Muslim running around the fjords of Norway.  Which audience does not include Conrad.  RUNNING TOTAL $227 MILLION.  Art!

     THE ALAMO 2004.  Lost $146 million.  "Remember the Alamo!" was the tagline, and of course nobody does because nobody went to see it.  After all, what need is there to remake it after the John Wayne classic?  RUNNING TOTAL $373 MILLION.  Art!

MARS NEEDS MOMS 2011.  Lost $187 million.  It's obvious why - that should be spelled "MUMS" you trans-Atlantic lexicon loafers.  RUNNING TOTAL $560  MILLION.

     JOHN CARTER 2012: Lost $250 million.  Conrad actually has this on DVD and it's a blast of a film, one of those engage-eyeballs-put-brain-in-neutral-gobble-popcorn-by-the-bucket films.  O well.  RUNNING TOTAL $810 MILLION.  Art!

     THE LONE RANGER 2013: Lost $239 million.  Unseen by Your Humble Scribe and it will remain thus.  Conrad not keen on seeing Chicken-on-head-man.  RUNNING TOTAL $1,049 MILLION.  Art!

TOMORROWLAND 2015.  Lost $185 million.  I think a better description would be  "TOOMUCHMORROWLAND".  RUNNING TOTAL $1,234 MILLION.  Art!

A WRINKLE IN TIME 2019.  Lost $152 million.  Conrad read the novel aeons ago - okay, probably 50 years ago - and cannot remember anything about it, although the critical consensus seems to be that it's a classic.  The film certainly isn't.  RUNNING TOTAL $1,386 MILLION.  Art!

MULAN 2020.  Lost $159 million.  Conrad saw the animated version when Darling Daughter was younger and was, frankly, unimpressed.  The Mongol threat to China amounted to about 5 enemy.  I wonder if they increased this total for the film, but not enough to actually watch it.  RUNNING TOTAL $1,545 MILLION.  Art!

     ONWARD 2020.  Lost $147 million.  Conrad will pause his torrent of invective as I've not seen this film and know absolutely nothing about it.  May be good, may be bad.  We may yet see.  RUNNING TOTAL $1,692 MILLION.  Art!

     JUNGLE CRUISE 2021.  Lost $162 million.  Hmmmm colour Conrad suspicious, this looks like Disney were trying to do an entirely un-necessary remake of "The African Queen", so I hope all involved were inflicted with boils and agues.  RUNNING TOTAL $1,854 MILLION.  Art!

STRANGE WORLD 2022: Lost $199 million.  Hmmm more like "STRANGLE WORLD", doncha think?  RUNNING TOTAL $2,053 MILLION.  Art!
  

     TURNING RED 2022.  Lost $167 million.  Well of course it did!  Do you think the average patriotic South Canadian is going to see a film about Communist subversion?  Bah!  RUNNING TOTAL $2,220 MILLION.

     Or, if you like, $2.22 billion.  Spread over 23 years, which makes it alright.

     NOT!

Conrad Steps Up

For the next two weeks Your Humble Scribe is going to be the Designated Dog-sitter, being at Edna The Entitled's beck and call.  With Walking Responsibility, which is no fun in this weather.

     Hmmmmm I wrote that a couple of hours ago and the rains have ceased, with blue skies and fluffy clouds replacing the concrete-grey ten-tenths cover of earlier.

     We shall see if this persists after I finish work and hie us hence on walkies.  Art!

Portrait of Edna anticipating

Bernie Wrightson

Another of those Random Pop-Up In My Head words or phrases, which I made sure to note down on my PIP workbook amidst notes of surgery names, postcodes and other frippery.

     Who is (or was) he?  Art!

     Past tense, he waltzed off this mortal coil seven years ago.  He was an artist known for co-creating "Swamp Thing" - about a Thing that lives in the swamp - and illustrating "Frankenstein", which is where this mental flotsam comes from, as I distinctly remember an illustration of his in a magazine or comic a good twenty years ago.  Art!

"Frankenstein's Monster found out Viktor had scoffed the last Ding-Dong"

     This is really only a placeholder item, as I'm prettttty sure we'll be coming back to Bernie.  O yes indeed.

"City In The Sky"

Ace and Captain Kirwin are back down in Australia, as the shades of night are falling on the edge of what passed for civilisation there.

By this time sunset had begun.  The growing darkness allowed the flames of a small fire to stand out on the road at the edge of New Eucla and bring into relief a scattering of tents and tethered horses that centred around the stone-circled flames.

     ‘Hoi!’ came a hoarse shout.  ‘You there!’ and red firelight glinted on the barrel of a shotgun.

 

     ‘Sorry about that,’ explained the sentry.  ‘We didn’t expect anyone else from the Stars to come down.  Was it Doctor Smith and his big blue box of tricks that brought you here?’

     Gnawing at salted, barbecued crocodile steak, Ace nodded.  There were at least a dozen people in the camp, a couple of them Euclans, the rest members of the South Australia Police who had come to investigate what on earth was happening off the Eyre Highway.  News of the Lithoi had spread far beyond the coastal communities thanks to the efficient courier network; not a few of the sinister alien lizards had been detected in their human-shaped disguises and killed.

     ‘The Doctor won’t like that,’ frowned Ace.  ‘Not big on killing, you know.’

     ‘More like “committed suicide”,’ explained the SAP on sentry-duty.  ‘Or “remote-control killed”.  We don’t think their bosses like them being taken alive.’

     The utter cads and bounders!

The Spotlight Falls On Another Very Naughty Boy

Namely, Matt Gaetz a.k.a. Eddie Munster, that unlovable girning bumbletuck who has managed to stay out of jail despite his ex-best friend forever, whom committed the same crimes at the same times, going to prison for 10 years.

     The House Ethics Committee are now poking their long, inquisitive noses into Matt's party conduct, where he REDACTEDREDACTEDREDACTED illegal drugs and REDACTED seventeen-year old back in the day, also REDACTEDREDACTED a few years back.  Yes, that kind of 'party', nothing to do with Politics.

     Matt is surely getting a little sweaty beneath the armpits, because the HEC can kick him out of Congress without going through any judicial process; they did the same with that venal vapid vainglorious venereal vilious viper George Santos.

     Bring on the buckets of popcorn!

Finally -

Edna is fretting at being cooped up all day, thanks to Conrad being a working man; you know Edna, earning money to pay for your steak fillet and salmon, you ingrate.

     Better put the Skechers on and take her for a trot.  Rain keep off!

If You Were To Hear "Pac Man"

Notice I Did Not Say Anything About Reading Or Seeing It

I have to sustain the level of mystique here, and keep the sleight of hand concealed, as it were.

     Actually, Conrad wonders if his audience are at all familiar with the ancient computer game "Pac Man", which must date back to the prehistoric era of the Eighties.  Art!

     Here you go, a browser game that one can play on a laptop, as opposed to the original arcade games that were as big as a fridge.  The game play is very simple: you are Pac-Man, whom you send along, eating up all the dots.  HOWEVER! - yet again - you see those other hemispherical blobs loitering about the board?  Those are <ahem> Binky, Inky, Pinky and Clyde.  They beetle about randomly and will terminate Ol' Packy with extreme prejudice if they catch him.  He can turn the tables and consume them if he eats a special 'power pellet'.  

     Of course, none of this is to do with the real subject matter of our Intro, as we rarely move in a straight line here, for it is the most boring of journeys.  Art!

     Hmmm this band always passed me by in their Seventies heyday, so you cannot call me a <coughcough> 'Pack Man'.  Besides, it gives me an excuse to smuggle in a picture of those 2000AD stalwarts - Art!

Described as a ' - foul pack of war-dogs'.  Don't sell 'em short!

     Okayyyy time to throw off the camouflage curtain and explain what we are really on about here, which is nothing to do  with video games, rock bands or free-booting future warriors.  Art!

David the Pakman.  He must have heard every variant of this going.

     David broadcasts on Youtube and in podcasts, and by South Canadian standards is left-wing, which would probably make him a centrist in Europe or a Liberal here in This Sceptred Isle <wrinkles nose at having to mention Politics>.  He has a Master's in Business Administration, which has a definite bearing on what follows.  Art!

     Yes, we are on about the DJT stock and share prices.  I notice that it rallied somewhat today, which may be due to Donald Judas Trump not being stuck in a courthouse all day Wednesday, and thus being able to lie about it extensively.

     "Where does Dav-"

     PATIENCE!  I am coming to that.  You see, David was as incredulous as the rest of us neutral observers about the performance of DJT's shares, and he did an excellent, comprehensible breakdown of how ridiculously over-priced they are.

PHYSICAL ASSETS: The value of a company's shares may be based on physical assets such as real estate, equipment or inventory.  Ol' Davy's example was the South Canadian retail chain Home Depot, who exist nationwide and have a gigantic inventory of everything from washers to ride-around mowers.  Art!

     DJT TMTG has 0 inventory.

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY: Share price may reflect the value held in patents, copyrights, trademarks or trade secrets.  One example - and it's a doozy - is Pepsi Cola.  Art!

     Truth Social is the only asset DJT has.  It's a cheap Twitter clone and would struggle to attain the status of a moronic property.

HIGH REVENUE: A stock valuation may be high because the business has a very high revenue stream, making lots and lots of money.  Art!

     This is the share price for Walmart.  You might wonder at the price, but this value is for over two and a half billion shares, or twenty times the number of DJT shares.  Not only that, Walmart did $640 billion in business in 2023.

PROFIT MARGIN: A company may have only a modest turnover overall, yet have high value shares because a lot of that turnover is profit.  When a typical company's profit margin is 11%, have a look at this one.  Art!

     VICIP have a profit margin of 47%.  Compare this with DJT, where Truth Social, their sole asset, made a loss of $54 million in 2023.  Ooops.

     Thanks to Ol' Davy for coming out with the examples, and Conrad for coming up with the graphs.

     I would like to end this Intro by mentioning Emily Stewart, the business editor for ABC.  She pointed out an industry leader, Apple, whose stock is traded at a value of seven times their annual turnover.  DJT, sole asset a Twitter knock-off with a very small user base, is trading stock valued at TWO THOUSAND times their annual revenue.  Art!

You're not kidding

"Sleeping Bear Dunes"

Conrad caught a YouTube short earlier today that featured this rather dangerous geological feature out in the wilds of South Canada.  On the shores of Lake Michigan, to be precise.  Let us prod Art awake and into sentience to earn his coal.

     This is the 'bluff' as they call it over there, a very steeply pitched incline that runs down to the beaches below, which by all accounts are very lovely indeed.  The trouble is that the incline you see here is all sand, which allows tourists to sand-ski down to the waiting waters in mere minutes.  As a Commenter on the YT short had it: "3 minutes to get down, two hours to get back up".  Art!

Beach at bottom

     When the waters of Lake Michigan are fully fed by rains and meltwater, the level rises to such an extent that portions of the beach cannot be exited (or entered, for that matter) by walking along the shoreline.  It's a trip up and down the bluff.  The local authorities have gotten fed up with rescuing Darwin Award winners.  Art!

     

     There are an average of 32 rescues per year.  Just to be clear, any rescue operation might involve the Park Rangers, who do not charge for carrying an Idiot Intervention, but there are at least five different Fire Departments who might respond, and they will impose a Bottomhole Tax.

     Nobody's yet explained why it's "Sleeping Bear" Dunes.

"The War Illustrated"

Nothing of financial matters here, nor beaches, as this is long after the Normandy landings of June 6th.  Art!

     At top you can see British infantry moving forward through cornfields, which provide concealment, not cover as wheat is most definitely not bulletproof.  You can see a platoon of Churchill tanks to port, in the middle of the infantry formation.  Out in front they'd be vulnerable to Teutons with hand-held anti-tank weapons; lagging behind, they'd not protect the infantry enough.  Note how the infantry have spread out, the better to avoid being hit by artillery or mortar fire.  Note also the absence of any British artillery fire; nobody has encountered any resistance yet.  Art!

     The terror of the Teutons; British 25-pounder field guns in action.  You can see the one to port is at maximum recoil as the barrel is as far back as it can go.  From the squarish cast of the muzzle these probably have the muzzle-brake attachment that minimises recoil and so saves the hydraulic buffers from the full impact of firing.  You can also see the ammunition limber under the tree to starboard, which carried the shells for ready-use; seventy-odd if I remember correctly.

"City In The Sky"

Ace is conducting Captain Kirwin around the ruins of a very battered New Eucla.

She turned to look around.  The pair stood on a low sandy hill towards dusk, with scrubby battered trees and bushes to their rear, beyond which a strange rushing noise came.  Before them stretched the mostly-wrecked township of New Eucla, and a damp trail led from beach to town.

     Ace led her down, along the muddy trail and between buildings wracked or sullied by mud and flotsam.  The odd dead fish lay festering in the gutters and a breeze made trembling buildings quiver and fall, carrying a vile smell reminiscent of rotten meat.

     ‘What a mess!’ ventured Ace.  ‘They really turned the turf over here.’  She caught Kirwin’s puzzled glance.  ‘The rock we dropped from orbit into the ocean hit this place with a miniature tidal wave.’

     Many buildings exhibited signs of blast damage, caused by the Lithoi flying eyes.  Kirwin made a short detour to examine the carcass of one flying eye, kicking it over with her foot and seeing rainwater dribble out from the broken seams.

     Two streets further on they came across the airborne stink’s source: the rotting body of a gigantic crocodile, swathed in layers of flies.  Both women kept a respectable distance.  Being a product of a controlled-environment that lacked such disgusting chaos, the captain decided that Earth had a few flaws to it.

     Rough with the smooth, hmmmm?

More Mystery MacGuffins From "The Daily Beast"

I shall exploit this as long as I can, for several days ago Your Humble Scribe cancelled the auto-renewal on their webpage.  That had better stick or you'll see a very cross Conrad.  Art!

     I'm really not sure about this.  Vacuum valve technology went the way of the dodo and the slide-rule in the Sixties.  Is it a deliberately engineered piece of retro-futuristic technology?

     Let us cheat and click on the link.

     I have no idea what any of that means.  Call it 'magic' and have done with it.

Finally -

Having a shower this morning was a bit of a waste, our remote Team Meeting got cancelled.  Still, I did look vaguely respectable when out doing the weekly shop in the evening.  Swings and roundabouts.

     Chin chin!

Castles In Pain

Otherwise, "Look At Me Being Clever!"

My reason for editing the old saw "Castles In Spain" is because there's a rationale behind it, which we may get to if I can crank out this scrivel fast enough.  Conrad needs to type fast enough to overcome your suspension of disbelief as you peruse the prose.  Art!

A castle in Spain.  Don't ask me which one.

     I realise I'm going to have to define this phrase, which also comes in the atmospheric variant of "Castles In The Air", and since castles are peculiarly solid constructions massing many thousands of tons, I can't do any better than revert to the old "Starry Trex" for an example.  Art!

Not a single railing to be seen

          "CIS" and "CITA" are defined in my copy of Brewer's as: "A visionary project or daydream", or an intangible object that may or may not exist, and on balance probably doesn't, and if it does it's way way less impressive or important than one imagines.

     "Where are you going with this?" I hear you quibble querulously, and that person at the back is making drinking gestures.  May Hob damn thee charcoal, sir, April is a sober month for Conrad!  So glad you asked, though.

     You see, we are returning once again to that fruitful source of blog content over the past few days, "The Stand" by Ol' Steve.  The title's a bit of a misnomer, most of the characters end up doing very little standing around.  Why, Larry, Joe and Nadine have made it from Maine to Vermont on motorbikes.  Art!

No, this is Harry and Frannie.  Just to keep you guessing.

     You see, Conrad has been looking at parts of the plot and the celestial over-view that describes vignettes of life elsewhere in apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic South Canada, because that way I can construct an elaborate extrapolative castle of background.

     For starters, I believe I mistakenly quoted the mortality rate of the A-Prime superflu.  It actually stands at 99.4%, which means a total of 2 million survivors in South Canada.and 48 million globally.  Those 2 million are reduced to 1,666,000 in Ol' Steve's post-post-apocalypse 'die-out'.  Art!

     We are told, back in the days when Cold War politics are still being worked out, that Mexico and Chile have both suffered infections, which means only 750,000 immune survivors in Mexico and merely 120,000 in Chile.  Peru and Senegal also get a mention, which means 200,000 survivors in Peru, who only lose 6,000 to the post-post-apocalypse die off.  Still, 194,000 survivors is not a lot.  And Senegal?  About 110,000 survivors.  Art!

     

     If Mexico, Peru and Chile are all hotbeds of A-Prime, then you can rest assured that the whole of Central and South America is thoroughly infected.  Plus West Africa if it's devastating Senegal.

     What about the rest of the world?  O I thought you'd never ask!

     In Chapter 22 we re-encounter officer Starkey, who plots with officer Creighton to pass on the Mission Go order to a mystery third party called Cleveland.  The date is June 24th and Patient Zero had spread A-Prime from 13th June.  Cleveland has agents behind the lines in the Sinister Union and The Populous Dictatorship, who were shipped out with vials of the superflu under a cover story that the phials contained 'radioactive tracking elements'.  Once they get the word, those phials are cracked open and whammo blammo.  Art!

     Well, tit-for-tat, it was biological warfare between Russia and China that devastated South Canada in "The Omega Man" so it's only polite to return the favour.  Incidentally, I think Choker Number One might be the late, great Simon Oakland, wh

     ANYWAY A-Prime is so contagious I don't doubt that the disease had already made incursions across the globe, and Ol' Steve does indeed mention 'technological societies' as being victims in Chapter 38.  Don't forget that TS was written in 1978, when the Cold War was at either the zenith or nadir of intensity, depending on your viewpoint, and crossing into either the Sinister Union or The Populous Dictatorship would be a rare and closely-monitored event.  Hence the underhand methodology.  And now you know where the 'Pain' of today's title comes from.  Art!

     

Doing the Standing Still

More Spanish Castles

Let me quote that definition again: "A visionary project or daydream, or an intangible object that may or may not exist, and on balance probably doesn't, and if it does it's way way less impressive or important than one imagines."  Yes, I've cheekily expanded the quote to include my additional havering, and once again whose blog is it?  Art!

     O dearie me!  DJT continues to slide in value and is down to almost a quarter of it's highest quotation, when it stood at just under $80 per share.  Conrad listened with some glee to an senior economics analyst from ""Forbes" telling an MSNBC presenter that the stock may lose as much as 90% of it's value.  Not only that, the Flabby Fraudster was trying to talk up the stock, saying that it cures gout, walks the dog and gives off a scent of lavender, which might be classed as securities fraud.  As if he'd notice another indictment!

Ruffian Castles In Pain

You may have heard of the devastating Ukrainian drone strikes on Ruffian oil refineries, which have generally been seen at a distance from people's phone cameras.  This kind of footage lacks definition and clarity, and a close up view.

     Well, the SBU need wonder no longer.  Art!

     The FSB might be having a word with whoever took this video clip, as the SBU will be poring over the layout to see which refinery it is.

     So, one Ruffian industrial castle (or cathedral) reduced to ruins.  There is a brief comment from the filmer to his mate, walking towards the camera, something along the lines of "Can it be fixed?" to a glum shake of the head.  The replacement plant would need to come from Exxon or Shell - who aren't going to supply it.

When It Rains, It Pours

The orcs of Orsk are finding this out, as are those residing in Tomsk.  Conrad might do an item on what the Ruffian press is laughably calling 'dams', as we here at the blog do have an interest in dams, and more specifically dam failures.  As with germ warfare, this is a tit-for-tat since the Ruffians have deliberately destroyed Ukrainian dams in the past, and now they get to undergo the experience themselves.  They don't seem happy about it.  In fact, the soggy boggy locals in both locations are madder than a wet hen, whose coop was probably washed downstream.  This does seem to be the season for very high levels of rainfall in the Mordor hinterland.  Art!

     Loitering around the crumbling edges of an embankment being rapidly eroded by a raging torrent is INCREDIBLY STUPID, Darwin Award level idiocy in fact.  

     The word is that the 'dam' in Orsk cost 10 billion rubles to construct, which frankly sounds like typical Ruffian corruption at work, the local governor admitting that it didn't look as if cost more than 1 billion rubles.  Thing is, getting it repaired is going to cost even more as the ruble is on the slide again.  Art!

     Having seen and read all this, one cannot realllllly be too harsh on our own April weather here in This Sceptred Isle, all the more so as our dams are the real thing.

"City In The Sky"

The sternly empirical Captain Kirwin is being given a crash-course in trans-temporal dynamics, thanks to the TARDIS.

     ‘What’s all this for?’ asked Kirwin, grubby and still amazed at how enormous planet Earth was when you were down on it’s surface.  Not only that, there were frightening arthropods here that were big enough to carry off small children – she’d disturbed several in her quest.

     The Doctor winked at her.

     ‘People on Arc One have refrained from asking what the Lithoi are going to do when the sphere descends.  Nothing good, I expect.  So this bric-a-brac will go together to create an electromagnetic distraction to keep them busy.’

     Both women stared at the collection of junk before being bustled inside the TARDIS, where the Doctor hastily piloted it into the ether again.  Once again Kirwin was non-plussed by the short duration and the different scene displayed on the scanner screen when the brief journey ended.

     ‘Ace – you have your radio?  Good.  Now, I must return to Arc One to provide indispensable help and advice, whilst you two hike out to a viewing position in the Nullarbor Plain.  Whatever you do STAY CLEAR of the Lithoi base!’

     Kirwin witnessed the big blue box vanish into thin air, leaving behind a ghostly echo sounding like the heartstrings of the universe being given a good shaking, and felt shaken herself.  The American’s historical datacore didn’t explain explicitly how TARDIS worked, despite the CIA having it’s hands on a copy back in the Seventies*.  Matter transmission?  Teleportation?  Magic?

     Or all three at once.

How The World's Largest Democracy Works

India, in case you were wondering.  Unlike Ruffia or The Populous Dictatorship, the end result is not pre-selected.  Art!

Finally -

That's getting far too close to Politics, so we'll end things right there.

*  Possibly The Master's TARDIS.