Fighting Fire With Even More Fire

As The Saying Goes

This time, there wasn't a Candair firefighting aircraft to put out the blaze.  

     Only in metaphor, as this Intro involves a condominium and we wouldn't want it to go the way of Easton district in Los Angeles, would we?

     Once more we have a cautionary tale from Reddit, and this time the Least Valuable Player was not the Chief Villain and Villainess, but rather the narrator's singularly useless girlfriend, who appears to be one of those interesting creatures that combines the spinelessness of a jellyfish with the boot-wiping ability of a doormat.  Art!

     I had to use the prompt 'Spineless rug' as the AI Art Generator jibbed at 'Spineless doormat', deeming it to be unsafe.  Go figure.

     ANYWAY we have the location, which was a condominium with a master and secondary bedroom, a bathroom, kitchen and basement, where Forebearing Artisan - hereafter FA - and his girlfriend, whom was called 'Vicky' in the story, but whom I will call 'Sicky' for the purposes of this narration, lived alone.

     FA mentioned that he worked on-campus with 'Chucky', whom I will call 'Sucky' for the purposes of this narration, as he was stupid and immature.  Sucky's girlfriend, originally called 'Banshee', I shall now dub 'Yucky', was the complete opposite of Sucky, being immature and stupid.  Art!

The trio

     Sicky waited until she and FA were headed out of state to Oregon to inform him that she'd asked Sucky and Yucky to move in to the condo to help with rent.  This was the first FA had heard about it, and he wasn't best pleased.  He had to put up with it as a fait accomplit.  I'd say that counts as Red Flag #1.

     When they got home, it was to all their stuff being moved out of the master bedroom so that Sucky and Yucky could move their larger bed in.  FA bristled in readiness until Sicky told him to let it be, and he adopted her spineless posture and did so.  Red Flag #2.  This, however - first time use today! - was only the beginning of a gradual descent into misery, because the Gruesome Twosome only paid a third of the rent they owed, claiming that because they supplied so much furniture, they needed to pay less.

     Sicky told him to let it be.  Red Flag #3.  Art!

     They refused to let FA or Sicky sit on or use any of their furniture -

     Sicky told him to let it be.  Red Flag #4.

     They took down all the original decorations and put up their own -

     Sicky told him to let it be.  Red Flag #5.

     They refused to clean the bathroom or any of the dirty dishes they created.

     Sicky told him to let it be.  Red Flag #6.

     Yucky took over half the kitchen with boxes of her toys, that she refused to store in the basement because 'they would get cold and lonely down there'.  This is a grown woman, not a 5-year old, in case you were wondering.  There were also clear signs of FA & Sicky's bedroom being used by Other People when they were off visiting in Oregon.

     After two months of this Sicky disappeared to Europe on a study tour for two months, which is when FA activated Pro-Revenge Mode.  Art!

     He invited his three jock friends Rich, John and Dan to crash at his place.  Literally 'crash' as they played different sporting events in the rather small condo, including football (the South Canadian version as above), basketball, fencing and laser tag.  This enraged Yucky, who would storm out of the master bedroom and yell at them, to which they would cup their ears and feign deafness thanks to the volume of their sporting activity.  FA also described them as 'shucking coconuts', which I am hesitant to look up, as it's possibly an incredibly seedy and squalid nickname for - ah.

     Another noisy activity!  In addition, they threatened to take down all the Unfair Pair's decorations and use their decorations unless the balance of the rent was coughed up.  They hid all the dirty dishes and bath/shower scum in the Poo Two's bedroom, unboxed all Yucky's toys and ran amok with the toy lawnmower across the condo's corridors.  Art!

 Another noisy activity!  

     After four weeks of this the Gruesome Twosome angrily stated that they were moving out, which was greeted with general hilarity.  Come moving day, FA and his trio of buds, plus a couple of cheerleader friends, were parked on the lawn outside the building, with beach umbrellas, drinks, food, towels and party music.  Every trip Double Trouble made to their car - and there were a lot - was greeted with cheers, waves and cheerleading rah-rahs, which of course sent both Chief Villain and Villainess into paroxysms of rage.  Peak performance was when they were struggling with a huge couch, that nobody else had been allowed to use, to a chorus of mocking advice and laughter.  Yucky unwisely took the bait and stomped over to yell 'Are you going to sit and make fun or help us?'

     Cue short mock discussion with the resolution 'Sit and make fun!'

     That was the last FA ever saw of either, as he moved to a different campus after that semester.

     A sublime case of, as I said, fighting one conflagration with an even bigger, better one.  One hopes FA wised up and ditched Sicky, too - "She came back from Europe and he had Oregon".

Ooops Again

<sigh> Your Humble Scribe would like to think that the blog is incredibly popular all of a sudden, yet his innate cynicism and realism makes him doubt that Blogger's traffic algorithm is doing anything but going potty - AGAIN.  Art!

     Those figures are as of 08:17 on a Thursday morning, which is reason enough to look askance at them.  The weekend is a far better bet for higher traffic, given the dual posts each day - but come on - Thursday?

If This Is Victory -

We have recently mentioned the nuclear-powered icebreakers that Ruffia uses to create and keep ice-free lanes in the Baltic and Arctic, and today I'd like to focus on one in particular: '50 Let Pobyedy' which is Ruffian for '50 Years Of Victory'.  Art!

     The curious name comes from the supposed date it was laid down: 50 years after the collapse of the Third Reich (i.e. 1995), which the Ruffians like to pretend they caused all on their own.  In fact the collapse of the Sinister Union intervened and the ship lay uncompleted for 10 years, so it should be '60 Let Pobyedy' but I suppose they had all the letterheads printed already.

     ANYWAY here it is, approaching a Ruffian freight vessel encountering heavy pack ice.  Art!

     Sal, of 'What's Going On With Shipping', was quite fulsome in his praise of Ruffian icebreaker crews, whom he described as the best marine crews that Modern-day Mordor has.  The best?  Art!

     This is the moment both ships collide.  WHICH IS NOT WHAT YOU WANT WITH A NUCLEAR-POWERED VESSEL.  Just so we're clear.  One imagines the bridge crew on the '50 Years' were all drunk, and the freighter's crew were all asleep or hungover.  Art!

     Unlike the 'Koala', the ship that sank in the harbour at Ust-Luga, there are plenty of photographs of this accident, so much so that the Ruffians positively leapt to assert that there was no problem with the nuclear power plant and it was merely cosmetic damage, a bit of Blu-tak and gaffer tape and it'd be right as monsoon in no time.  In the immortal words of Doctor Johnson, yeah right.

More Movie Mopery

Back to that list by Jeremy Jahns, which has now progressed to Number Six.  Ol' Jezza did say he realised a lot of the entries on his list would be horror films, and he's been right so far.  Art!

     This is a remake I never knew existed - and for a reason.  According to Jezza, it's long, slow, boring and omits all the cool things from the book.  It apparently sat around unreleased for a couple of years - never a good sign - until it was quietly released to no sound of drums or thunder on 'Max', whatever that is.  Jezza unequivocally states that the Tobe Hooper version from 1979 - which I most definitely have seen - is far, far better.  And scarier.  Which is, in essence, what a horror film must be.  At least you know what to avoid now, and one imagines Stephen King's retirement account is s bit healthier.

An Interesting Aside

This will resonate with anyone who ever read John Le Carre and whom has an interest in the espionage trade.  Art!

     It was the other way round, thank you incompetent ES editor.  This chap was the head of Ukraine's 'Anti-Terror' organisation, except he was working for the Ruffians.  When he gets sentenced one imagines he'll go into permanent solitary confinement, otherwise he'd get beaten and/or stabbed on a daily basis.  The normal heirarchy in prisons is that child sex offenders are the lowest of the low, because traitors are a rare breed.

     ANYWAY once the Ukrainians had discovered him, they subsequently fed back false information to the orcs before they arrested him.

     The FSB now has the onerous task of trying to discover exactly when they were fed garbage instead of intelligence, meaning they have to now suspect that everything they ever got out of matey was utter moonshine.

Breaking The Ice

Conrad Is Unsure If This Aphorism Applies To Other Cultures

Or is it more applicable to our chilly, reserved island race here in Perfidious Albion?  According to 'Brewer's' it is "To dispel the stiffness and reserve of a first meeting or conversation."

     Well, get ready for a discursion about ice.  Art?

     Not that sort, you bafune!  Ice in the seas and oceans and at the poles.  Pole ice.

<sounds of Tazer charging-up in the background>

     Now, were Conrad to say "Ice-Nine" then you could be forgiven for thinking I was referring to the spooky concept at the heart of Kurt Vonnegut's novel "Cat's Cradle" which I have, of course - obviously! - read, though it was decades ago.  Art! O stop whining and put a bit of Sudocrem on it.

By far and away the best cover illo

     Ice-nine is a form of metastable water in solid form, that only melts at temperatures waaaaay above zero.  Rather than being an interesting scientific gimmick, it causes the destruction of all life on Planet Earth, because it acts as a seed crystal when coming into contact with liquid water.  That is, when it is incautiously and accidentally released, all liquid water becomes ice.  At least according to Ol' Kurt.  Conrad is pretty sure there are isolated water sources not connected to any ocean or riverine system, and surely there must be an Ice-Ten that turns 

     ANYWAY what I actually meant by 'Ice Nine' were the nine nuclear-powered icebreaker ships that were the property of the Sinister Union and which latterly passed into the service of Ruffia.  Art!

     NO!  This is not a Ruffian icebreaker.  Thanks to the AI Art Image Generator, this is what you get from the prompt 'A short history of icebreaking' and either by accident or design, it's rather accurate.  You see, back in the 14th century, the better-heeled burghs and towns of Lowland Europe used ice-breaking boats to keep their moats ice-free.  A moat your enemy can walk over is pretty useless, after all.  

     Later still, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, ice-breaking boats would be used to keep canals free from ice during winter.  Art!

     This is the Ruffian icebreaker 'Yermak', which went into service in 1899.  As is plainly visible, she is a coal-fired steam-engined vessel, which lasted in service until the Sinisters finally scrapped her in 1963.

     What must have galled them for every single minute of her service was that she was constructed in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, IN GREAT BRITAIN.  64 years service: they built to last in those days, hmmmm?

     Ruffia has considerable need of icebreakers, given the propensity of the Baltic Sea and the port of Leningrad (or whatever they're calling it this week) to freeze over.  

     Not only that, as Charlie Chipmunk Cheeks has gloated, global warming has reduced total ice cover in the Ruffian Arctic to such an extent as to make new sea routes via the polar route now viable.  Art!

     This is the 'Lenin', the world's first nuclear-powered civilian vessel and the first nuclear-powered icebreaker, which went into service in 1957.  Atomic power proved to be an ideal solution for this class of ships, as it removes the need to rely on ports and harbours where fuel needs to be stored.

     In fact I fudged the total of nuclear icebreakers in the service of Modern-day Mordor.  The 'Lenin' is now a museum.  There were six of the 'Arktika' class ships laid down but only two are still working.  Art!

'Arktika' in the - you may be ahead of me here - Arctic

    Then there are two icebreakers that were built by the FINNS IN HELSINKI (sorry not sorry for shouting there), of the 'Taymyr' class.  Art!

"Rosatomflot"

     That makes four active of nine so far.  Art!

     This one of the new 'Project 22220' class icebreakers, confusingly called 'Arktika' as well, one of four.  So that's eight total so far.  Art!

One of only four ever globally

     This is very much a rara avis: a nuclear-powered civilian freight vessel, the 'Sevmorput', which is designed and optimised for transit through ice, and that makes nine.  Yes yes yes, it's not strictly an icebreaker, sue me.

     One of the functions of icebreakers is to create lanes through pack ice and to keep them clear, and also to escort freight vessels through said ice.  To this end an icebreaker, of whatever propulsion system, needs an especially reinforced hull, a bow optimised to penetrate ice, and powerful engines with plenty of ooomph (stop me if I get too technical).  The secondary ability actually mount the ice and crush it by sheer mass is also an essential design feature, for when pack ice gets too thick.  That the whole hull needs to be reinforced is due to the dangers of 'pinch', which sounds like a minor inconvenience but which can stove in the sides of a vessel.  Art!

     The pinch comes when tides or winds or both in concert move pack ice laterally against the ship's hull, which in a conventional ship is not designed to resist solid object impact.  Of which more later.

     I think that's enough of Atomic Arctic hi-jinx, I still have 'Invincible' to watch.  I'm treating as homework.  First world problems, hmmm?

"The War Illustrated Edition 203 March 29th 1945"

A cover illo from the Mediterranean, specifically Northern Italy, rather than France or Germany on the cover of this issue.  Art!

     I doubt you can resolve the text here, so let me: it informs that the weather in Italy for February had been execrable, showing a flooded airfield as an example and proof that the weather in Italy was only rarely of the sub-tropical variety so fondly assumed by those not there.  It also illustrates the parlous condition of the Teuton (and Fascist) forces in Italy, who were having to process beta vulgaris to produce industrial alcohol as vehicle fuel, since there was almost no petrol left.  Art?

How to beet the Teutons

Talking Of Blades -

Propellor blades, you numpties - either on aircraft - see photograph of TWI cover - or on ships - see the Intro.  Or even, as my 'Brewer's' has it: 'Blade: a former name for a dashing or swaggering young man.'  'Blade' because at the time of this description being minted, a young man wore a sword.  By the 21st century this would have been replaced by a gun.  Art!

Or a Voight-Kampff machine

     Yes, we are back on 'Blade Runner' again and if you don't like THE EXIT DOOR IS THAT WAY!  Today I want to bring up the 'Box Office Mojo' details to show how unsuccessful it was in commercial terms.

     So, going by the 50% rule, it made back $20 million at the box office, on a budget of $28 million, so quite a flop.  At the time.  The six different versions - Ha! in a film about Nexus-6 replicants - released since then must have put it into the black by now.  It's probably like Kubrick's films; generate a profit over a looooong time.

From Best To Worst

Yes I say, Hastings Ismay.  Ol' Bladey Runnings is now widely recognised as one of the bestest sci-fi films evah, which is fair enough.  What about worst ever films?  Well, for 2024 we need to look no further than Jeremy Jahns list of the top bottom films of last year, and we're now down to Number 7.  Art!

     Yes, he is cheating here by nominating three films for the same slot, but he excuses this by stating that they are uniformly either padded, generic rip-offs where you need only see the trailer and not bother with the film, or are completely absent of imagination.  I have excluded the next frame of the film as Jezza resorts to alcohol, and who can blame him, he's got to watch all this stuff whilst we need only deal with the recaps.  Conrad has never heard of any of them and does not feel any the poorer for this absence.  Why yes they are all three of them horror films.  Because this is one genre where a zero-budget film can make a profit.  The other is pornography and we shall end this item right here.

Ooooh, The Lowest Blow Of The Low

There has been a message on our corporate G-mail office board about NOT stealing other people's lunches from the fridge at HQ.  Apparently this has happened a couple of times.  It really is one of the most despicable behaviours your compatriots can exhibit, and there are riotous tales on Youtube's Reddit channels about the various schemes that have been used as expedients by the victims of this thieving.  This can vary from dosing cake with Ex-Lax (risky in legal terms), filling chocolates with oil of liquorice (also dodgy if slightly less so) or using Ghost Chillies in a stew (no legal recompense there, thiefy-boy!).  Art!

     I shall have to dig up a couple of these revenge fables and recount them.

Finally -

Out of nowhere I've been making recipes from my 'Diabetes Cookbook', and today is weekly shopping day (I'm typing Thursday's blog on Wednesday), so I shall have to scan a few recipes for the required ingredients.

    CYA!

The Misery Of Muscovy's Matelots

 You May Not Be Familiar With This Word

In which case shame on you!  It's derived directly from the Old French for 'Sailor' and is nowadays pretty much restricted to British usage when referring to the honourable and noble members of His Majesty's Brittanic Royal Navy.  It also starts with 'M' and is the reason it got stuck into today's title.

     Before we get into the main part of today's Intro, I would like to turn the clock back a couple of centuries, to the Napoleonic Unpleasantnesses.  Art!

     What you're looking at here is the city of Riga as it was in 1812, when Nappy and his army invaded Ruffia, which overnight turned Great Britain (as we were then) and the orcs into allies, which came very much out of left field.  The French laid a partial siege upon Riga, since they couldn't fully invest the city, the defences of which were bolstered by Tsarist gunboats and -

     The British Baltic Fleet.  Yes indeed, the Royal Navy got it's nose into all sorts of places, even (or especially!) where it shouldn't.  Art!

     This is one of the author's excellent series of 'Hornblower' novels, following the titular hero across the duration of the Napoleonic Unpleasantnesses, when the map of Europe was very different from today.  Ol' Fozzy inserts Hornblower - I am not going to come up with a diminutive for that surname thank you very much - into the siege of Riga.  Hornblower's ship-of-the-line is crammed with guns that could inflict severe punishment on the besieging French, except it sits far too low in the water to bring any cannon to bear on them.  

     The solution, of course - obviously! - is camels.  Art!

     Yes, Art, thanks, you jellybrain.  I mean SHIP camels.  Try again and get it right or the Tazer next time.

Better

Even better

     These particular devices are separate containers, or barges in the case of Hornblower, that are loaded with ballast and then attached to the ship's hull.  The ballast is then emptied out and this displacement lifts the ship's hull much higher out of the water.  It can then traverse sandbanks or other shallow waters, which is what they were originally used for by the Dutch.  Hornblower uses this increased elevation to rain havoc upon the French.  In real life one supposes that the orc crews stood and moped at how much better the Royal Navy was at everything naval, just as they are today.  Art!

     Yes, it's Sal Mercogliano again, whom seems to have been ill recently.  Hopefully the chicken soup worked and he's feeling better.  He was, at least, good enough to recount the travails of Muscovy and it's Marine Mordancy, because they've had it rough of late. Art!

     This is the 'An Yang 2', which is a 56,000 ton bulk carrier carrying cargoes to and from Ruffia.  On this journey it was in ballast, not carrying a cargo, and it managed to run aground on the eastern shores of Sakhalin Island.  This is bad news, the tides there can rise and fall by 20 feet, and it already appears to have been holed twice in the hull already, thanks to the storm conditions.  Art!

     It was definitely not constructed to take that kind of punishment and the longer it's left the worse condition it will end up in.

     Ooops.

     Then there is the 'Koala', a Seuzmax-class 160,000 ton tanker that was preparing to depart the port of Ust-Luga with a cargo of 130,000 tons of oil.  The ship is 22 years old, thus very long in the tooth and very probably one of the Ruffians 'Shadow Fleet'.  Whilst getting up speed to depart, there were multiple explosions in the engine room and the stern sank.  Art!

In happier times

     This is bad, yet not catastrophic- so far.  What gives cause for worry is that the orcish authorities have loudly claimed there is no risk of an oil leak - which is sufficient to mean there is risk of an oil leak.  The stern sank in the relatively shallow waters of a port, meaning that if the hull stays intact then 130,000 tons of crude can be pumped out to another vessel.  If it doesn't split in half.  Perhaps they could use camels to re-float it?

     Note that there are no Ruffian pictures of the sunken tanker, because this has obviously embarrassed them hugely and if there are no photos then they can pretend it never happened, or if it did it was only a minor marine matter.

     Tomorrow - hi-jinx in the Atomic Arctic!

More Of The Bottom 10 Films Of 2024

Props to Ol' Jezza, for bearing up under a minor tsunami of celluloid tat so that we, the audience, don't have to, yet which allows us to relentlessly mock and jeer at the odious output.

     This time we are onto Number 8.  Art!

     Once again Conrad hasn't seen this, has no reason to and will instead go polish his brass hand.  Jezza dismisses it as a remake of an older film, which at least had the charm of novelty (it gets 3 stars on IMDB so not bad), whereas this is merely a generic slasher, with 'dipstick characters making all the wrong decisions'.  Nah.  Sorry, Jezz, you're not selling it.

"The War Illustrated Edition 202 March 16th 1945"

Since the Intro is not chock-full of Unpleasantness, we are allowed to have TWI as an item, according to the rules I made up in my head.  By the time of this edition the war in Europe had less than two months to run.  Art!

     These ladies are with the ATS, or Auxiliary Territorial Service, and they have ventured from This Sceptred Isle to Belgium, the cockpit of Europe, but a little more tranquil than it had been earlier that year.  They are the crews for anti-aircraft guns, 250 of them in a detachment of 320 total.  Here you see them chatting with local Belgian youth, watching the skies, marching through Ghent, building their own quarters and ogling a positive gallery of photographic pinups.  Not as martial as usual.  Good thing?  Bad thing?  Only you can tell!

Let's Finish This Off

I refer to John Delaney's vlog about the M4 Sherman, which was not quite the barely-mobile death-trap that various Cassandras would have you believe.  He mentions 3 sub-factors to Firepower, Protection and Mobility:

Rate of Fire: The 75 mm shells were relatively compact and handy, making them easy to handle and load.  So much so that a Sherman crew could fire between 15 to 20 per minute.  A canny crew could fit up to a hundred shells into their tank, meaning five or six minutes of non-stop firing at the enemy.

Rate of Traverse: Or, how rapidly the turret could rotate, because this is how you laid the gun onto targets.  For a Sherman a full 360º took 17 seconds; the Teuton equivalent, the Mk IV, took 26 seconds; the Tiger and Panther took nearly a minute.  Again, this is not semantics or abstruseness; getting your gun onto a target and firing first was crucial across the Second Unpleasantness.

Gyrostabiliser: A little known gadget present in the Sherman, which kept the gun stable in azimuth, meaning that the gunner and commander knew very precisely where their gun was pointing even after a rough cross-country journey.  Which increased the probability of an effective first hit.  Art!

Finally -

Watched the first episode of 'Fallout' last night and it was entertaining enough.  Ella Purnell's character was a whole lot less annoying and stupid than she was in "Army Of The Dead", although it was a low bar.

     Conrad has never played or even seen the game the series is based on and doesn't feel he's missing anything, because computer games are the thief of time, and then some.  Art!

     Don't tell me, there's a sinister industrial conglomerate working away in the background?  How entirely novel and unexpected!

The Camels Are Coming!

Ha!  Gotcha!

You were, doubtless, imagining that this was going to be another one of Conrad's endless references to Captain James Bigglesworth of 266 Squadron, whose biography was written by W.E. Johns.  266, you see, flew the Sopwith 'Camel' biplane, a design known at the time as a 'scout' but which we, in our better-informed 21st Century knowledge, call a 'fighter'.  Art!

Now there's a cover with a very high NNNYYEAAWWW factor.  If we take a cold, hard look at the Camel, and if Art will put down his bowl of anthracite -

If you look closely you can see the 'hump' that housed the twin Vickers machine guns, which is where the plane acquired it's name.  Furthermore, the engine was a rotary one, which means that the engine itself spun around, providing tons of torque in one direction, which facilitated turning that way.  Going against the torque was a bit of a bind, though.  Art!

     Another interesting point about the Bentley engine was the lubricant: castor oil.  Yes, the stuff used to relieve bowel blockages in members of Hom. Sap.  It was sprayed into the engine, and a fair amount of it also sprayed out.  Captain Johns alleged it was possible to identify a Camel pilot by the oil-stained flying jacke

     ANYWAY that's far too much of what this Intro's NOT about.  No.  Today we are, once again, going to be mocking the Ruffian army, which today isn't even the best army in Ruffia, and their - ah - 'extemporised' logistics.

     Logistics is the art and science of supplying your armed forces, and is quite as important as having enough tanks and guns, because a tank without fuel is simply a very expensive pillbox, and a gun without ammunition is merely an over-engineered club.  Logistics has always been severely neglected by the Ruffians, because it takes two weeks to die of starvation and they can always drink from puddles.  Art!

     Behold! a Bactrian being used by bacterium.  This is how the orcs are getting around now, by camel.  Yes, seriously.  This is not as impossible as it might seem, I have watched a clip of Ukrainian soldiers on patrol coming across a stray camel in a village.  However - that word again - going back two thousand years in terms of transport is not reallllly the flex that the Ruffians think it is.

     The upside is that, despite it's name, you cannot eat the Ruffian 'Loaf' van, a.k.a. the 'Bukhanka', whereas, with the camel, if rations run short -  Art!

     In case you think this is an isolated occurrence, the orcs are now being supplied with donkeys for transport, because they've lost so many KAMAZ trucks to Ukrainian drones, artillery, mines, breakdowns and accidents.

     Just stop to ponder on that for a moment.  This is the 21st century and Modern-day Mordor is reduced to using donkeys.

     As I pontificated on Twitter, there is actually a place in modern warfare for donkeys or mules in pack trains, being used to carry supplies, and we've covered this on BOOJUM! in the past, in an abstract sense, in the pages of "The War Illustrated" and the splendidly detailed account in Professor Caddick-Adams "Monte Cassino".  Art!

 

     These are mules in Burma, where there were mountains and dense jungle, both of which would abruptly stop vehicles.  Not the sure-footed, sturdy and uncomplaining mules, though.  Art!

     These are Italian volunteer muleteers in Italy, where there were, again, mountains, and also mud.  Mud that would stop a jeep but not the humble donkey, which could traverse six inches of wet clay no problem.

     The common theme here is 'mountains'.  Mountain ranges are distinctly missing from Ukraine, which is mostly as flat as a billiard table.  There are a few distinctly unimpressive 'mountains' in the Carpathians and Crimea, which are nowhere near the conflict zones and which thus don't require donkeys.

     How bureaucratic and bumptious the Ruffian High Command is can be judged by the fact that they have officially supplied donkeys - and at least one camel - in lieu of cars, which the orcs had bought themselves, and which were then 'confiscated'.  Or, to be more accurate, stolen. 

     From Infantry Fighting Vehicles to e-scooters, and from GAZ trucks to donkeys, the inevitable march of progress.  Art!

More Of The Worst Films Of 2024

Thank you to Jeremy Jahns, who nobly subjected himself to a whole lot of torture over the past year so that we don't have to.  Let us now look at Number 9 on his list of execrable offerings.  Art!

     I've never seen it nor heard of it yet I think I can sum it up from the poster alone: another cookie-cutter slasher horror film featuring extremely stupid people behaving ineptly and dying horribly one by one.  Am I right?  Art!

     There doesn't seem to be any information about the budget, which implies it was more a thread of cotton than a shoestring, nor about what box office it did.   No wonder Ol' Jezza drowns his sorrows with a glass of whisky.

Conrad - Still ANGRY!

I have been stockpiling my Frothing Nitric Ire for Lo! these many weeks, I can tell you, making a list and adding to it every time I deal with insolent and obscurantist Codeword compilers.  Let the venom flow freely today!

ZYMOLOGY: Come on, I bet you've never heard of this one before.  I have, because I've been doing Codewords for years and they tried it on with this word before.  It is the science of fermentation, so it applies equally to beer and bread and is not to be confused with a Zueglodon or zeugma.  Art!

AXIOM:No!  Not the creepy plastic mannikins from "Doctor Who".  This is a lot more profound, if considerably less exciting.  "A generally accepted proposition or principle, sanctioned by experience" according to my 'Collins Concise Dictionary'.  Art!

     Thank you AI Art Generator.  Quite what a mountain has to do with the Greek root 'Axios' meaning 'Worthy' I don't know, unless they refer to a pack train of donkeys ascending the pass between peaks?

TABARD: This is a variety of sleeveless jacket, typically worn in times past by heralds or knights, derived from the Old French, except nobody's too certain of the original spelling, nor where it arrived from in France.  Art!

How it's going                                   How it was

     Nowadays they are used for much more down-to-earth purposes such as protective gear in the catering industry.  Ho hum.

 

A Whole Lot Of Nothingburger

Conrad regularly sees sidebar items about various celebritutes I've never heard of before, including the following.  Art!

     Who are these characters?  Actually, more to the point, who cares who these characters are.  Conrad is entirely unfamiliar with them, except that they may be that lowest of low-hanging fruit, rap 'musicians' <hack spit>.  No, I cannot be bothered enough to even Google about them.  One of them seems connected with the Superb Owl celebrations in South Canada, where they revere the wise owl - symbol of Oldham and Athens - or something.

Our Journey With Bernie

Is getting a bit more fraught, as it seems the higher-numbered FPG cards are under-represented on teh Interwebz.  Numbers #73, #74. #75 and #76 are missing from Google searches, so we have to jump to #77: 'Fish Sticks'.  Art!

    Clearly, this innocent fish is being maliciously attacked by a female member of Hom. Sap. who is trespassing in regions she ought not to be swimming in, or have I gotten it wrong?

Finally -

Monday was a wash-out.  How is Tuesday going to do better?  We're watching you, Tuesday!