If I Were To Say 'Coach'

You Probably Wouldn't Expect A Treatise About Tanks

And, for once, you'd be right.  No tanks today, neither of the Armoured Fighting Vehicle type nor the fuel container type.  Tankless BOOJUM! shall be.  Unless I change my mind, I'm fickle like that.

     So! one memory I have from my days - well, twenty-two years actually - at Connexions is of Gavin, my manager, who volunteered as a football coach for young lads.   One of the worst things about his role were the aggressive, ignorant, abusive, entitled parents of the sprogs he was tutoring.  Art!

     Never read it myself.

     ANYWAY I had wit enough to look up 'Coach' in my 'Brewer's Dictionary Of Phrase And Fable' and it did indeed have an entry.  It transpires that, when the railways arrived in This Sceptred Isle from 1840 onward, they inherited or adopted many of the terms previously used for horse-drawn transport.  Such as?  Well, 'Carriage' and 'Guard' and of course - obviously! - 'Coach'.  Art!

     'Coach' is another word akin to 'Biro' in that it has Hungarian roots.  It originates in the Magyar town of Kocs, where they built wagons, known in Hungarian as 'Kocsi szeker' or 'Wagon of Kocs'.  No, I'm not making this up.

     ANYWAY my BDOPAF also explains the use of 'Coach' as a tutor because they 'carry' their charges.  Hmmmm.  Conrad unsure how much he believes that one.  I could look it up in my 'Collins Concise English Dictionary' except it's at the bottom of a large pile of books and I am a lazy dastard.

     This is where our Intro really kicks off, as we enter a tale related by a Commenter on a Youtube Malicious Compliance vlog.  We shall call them Referee Of Youth, or ROY hereafter.  You see how it all fits together?

     

     ROY was in reality a high-school mathematics teacher, who had volunteered to coach the football team, which South Canadians have to qualify with 'soccer'.  His team were in the next-to-last game when POtty-Mouthed Punk, hereafter POMP, lost his rag and roundly abused the in-game referee.  ROY instantly 'benched' POMP, meaning he was off the pitch and not playing, for unsportsmanlike behaviour.  POMP immediately went whining to His Entitled Mother, hereafter HEM, because he'd never heard the word 'No' in his life.  She stormed up to ROY, demanding that her little darling be allowed to play.  Another person who had never heard the word 'No'.

     Things really kicked off the next morning, a Sunday, when ROY and the School Director had assembled all the players, and their parents, in a single room in school.  ROY rather theatrically introduced themself, and POMP and HEM.  HEM immediately told the School Director to fire ROY for benching her little ingrate.  The School Director gracefully refused, stating they were only present as an observer.  Art!

SD knew where this was going

     ROY then stated that he resigned from his position as coach, at which HEM smiled smugly, thinking they had won.

     They had not.  ROY the informed the assembled players and parents that, as per regulations, a team without a coach automatically forfeited all games, so not only would POMP not be playing that day, neither would anyone else.  By this time HEM is getting serious death-glares from everyone in the room, and whines at ROY for doing what she asked for.  She told SD to fill the now-vacant position and he once again gracefully refused, stating that he was leaving at lunchtime.    She then threatens to have ROY fired from his coaching position in an exemplary case of Buyer's Regret, only for him to trump her with news that he was a mathematics teacher, not a coach.  She insisted and persisted, to no avail.  Many of the team players went home crying, and all their parents nursed a grudge against HEM from that moment on.  Art!

     

HEM and POMP.  Perhaps.

     As proof that neither HEM nor POMP were remotely self-aware, when he moved on to High School, he went for trials at their soccer team, and was immediately rejected.  HEM, watching from the crowd, promptly did her entitled rant, which didn't get him back on the team but which did get her permanently banned from all HS sports events.  Way to go HEM!  

Number One With Lots Of Bullets

Now, this one I have heard of.  Top of the 'Rotten Tomatoes' list of films that scored 0%, we have 'Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever' from 2002, and I remember it being absolutely panned at release.  Art!

     To say it underperformed at the box office is to understate wildly.  Art!

      So, using the 50% return to studio rule, it made $10 million.  What was the budget, you might enquire.  $70 million, an awful lot at the time in 2002 dollars.  No, not even the lure of Lucy Liu is going to make Conrad consider this one.

What Took You So Long?

One has to wonder what lies behind this headline.  Art!

     I cannot resist looking.

     Aha.  So, the polling organisation Ipsos and ABC delivered a poll in April of 2025 that indicated only 45% of people were worried that King Piggy was going to keel over dead  suddenly.  They re-ran the same poll this year in April and found those concerned DJ Tango was going to croak face down in his Happy Meal had grown to 59%.  It doesn't help that he continually necks four times the recommended daily dose of aspirin.

More Randomness From The Algorithm

At least it provides me with a bit of content, so there is a silver lining.  Art!

     What on earth is it?  Sorry but 'Blueridge 47,000 BTU (3,9 Ton) 3-Zone 23 SEER Inverter R-454B Series Heat Pump Ultra' is pure obfuscation.  I am guessing as the maker appears to have 'Air' in their name that it is some species of heating and/or ventilating kit.  'BTU' refers, I believe to 'British Thermal Units' hence my guess at a heating device.  

     Yes, I could click on the link but that would be cheating.  We have our morals here at BOOJUM! and I refuse to raise them.

I Think They Ironed The Kinks Out

We have commented a few times on the Kozaky's 'Flamingo' Firepoint cruise missile, which has had issues with accuracy ever since it was introduced.  It came late into service because the orcs bombed the original factory location and everything had to be moved.  

     Well, last night one of them travelled 450 miles into darkest Mordorvia, where it hit the VNIIR industrial plant in Cheboksary, which produces guidance kit for drones and missiles.  Art!

     This hapless orc was out wandering the night streets with his mates whilst air raid sirens are going off all round.  His mate hears the noise of a jet engine approaching at speed and manages to catch sight of the Flamingo.  Art!

     That's the bird in flight.  The trio were dangerously close to the VNIIR plant, which gives them a splendid opportunity to appreciate the 1,100 kilo warhead the Flamingo carries.  Art!

     None were injured but may have needed a change of underwear.  Might take a bit of spade and shovel work before the VNIIR plant is fit for purpose again.  After the night-time explosion the orcs moved a load of electronic warfare kit into Cheboksary, which is causing Kozaky drones to hit apartment buildings as they get spoofed.  

Finally -

Going out with a Biercism. 

"Neighbour, n: One whom we are commanded to love as ourselves, and does all he knows to make us disobedient."

If I Were To Say 'Tanks'

I Imagine You'd Roll Your Eyes

 - expecting me to yark on about how under-rated the Crusader was or that the final drive on the Panther was a major source of breakdowns, or post yet more photos of BOVINGTON TANK MUSEUM, or explain how rubbish the T-34 was in reality.  Art!

Petrol Engine Mother

     Now, I do have a set of notes on the Sherman tank, taken from the 'Historical Notes' Youtube channel, which I will inflict upon you one day, although that day is not today.  Art!

     The brawny beast you see here is the Challenger 3, an upgraded version of the Challenger 2, adapted for modern drone-intensive warfare - note the interesting-looking kit atop the turret.  One innovation you can't tell about is the use of a smoothbore barrel for the first time in a British Main Battle Tank.  Previously they had been rifled and were the only MBT not to have gone over to smoothbore.   Art!

     Here we see the Sinister T-62, which was the first production tank to have a smoothbore gun in 1961.  Smoothbore eliminates the drag from rifling and permits much higher muzzle velocities to be attained, meaning armour penetration is much improved.  However - a word you were surely waiting for - I recall Sinister army veteran Victor Suvorov saying that the T-62 was hopelessly inaccurate 'An all-powerful gun that always missed.'  Because for effective use if a smoothbore, you need computer control, and Sinister computers in 1961 capable of doing that took up most of an office block.  Nowadays there's probably a phone app that'll do the trick.

     ANYWAY the kind of 'tanks' that I intend to inform you about today are the kind used to store oil and fuels, because once again Ukraine has been blamming the living daylights out of them.  Art!

     The 'tank farm' as the South Canadians like to call them, at Tuapse has been extensively blammed, on the 16th of April, then the 20th of April, then the 28th of April, then on 1st May.  Art!

Courtesy 'Jake Broe'

     The Kozaky drones hitting the refinery aren't being intercepted and the fires are so massive and widespread it's not worth the FSB's time to track down and threaten people who post clips.  Tuapse has now been hit eleven times in total and seems about 75% destroyed.  

     Then we have the critical pumping hub at Perm, which as of Sunday was still on fire.  Art!

     

     Don't forget, this site is in Siberia, meaning that very little Ruffian infrastructure is beyond Ukrainian drone range, and it's another indication that Ruffia's size is a major weakness; there are simply too many sites spread out over too much land to protect more than a fraction of them.  Especially when 280 SAM and radar systems are defending Moscow, and another 27 protecting Putinpot's Valdai palace.  Art!

     That's one of the storage tanks at Perm burning merrily away.  Art!

Courtesy 'Special Kherson Cat'

     Six 50,000 cubic metres capacity storage tanks were destroyed, burning up almost 2 million barrels of oil.  Jake then put up some pictures of a tank of that size being constructed, not sure whom to attribute for them.  Art!

Inside

Outside

     Constructing one of these things is a major engineering project in itself.  'EMPRmedia' on Twitter did a bit of digging and found that the cost of a single 50,000 cubic metre tank is $1.5 million, with the contents being worth $30 million at current prices.  So, $9 million in construction costs and $180 million in lost oil.  Caused by 6 'Lyuty' drones that cost $1.2 million, or a return-on-investment ratio of 157.

     O and the governor of Krasnodar Krai Oblast has demonstrated what a copium overdose looks like.  He claims there is no damage to any oil infrastructure, the Ukrainian drones carry fuel tanks of their own that rain down burning fuel when hit, nothing to see here, just keep shovelling that oily sand into a bucket.  Art!

      How do the Kozaky know which tanks to hit?  I've mentioned this before, but it bears repeating.  The long-range drones used have thermal cameras that detect how full or empty the tanks are, so the operator can prioritise targets.  My guess is that the four tanks left alone at Perm are empty.  Art!

     I'll stop here to avoid being boring, but above are two more 50k cubic metre tanks blown up at Gorky in Mordorvia, another $63 million in losses.

     So - tanks!

Oooops

One thing that popped up on my news feed was an item about a film released in late April, 'Desert Warrior', to resounding failure.  It seems to have been in Development Hell for 5 years, ballooning the cost to $150 million.  Art!

     It has been an utter failure at the box office.  Art!

     So the studio will get back $350,000.  That $150 million very probably doesn't include marketing and distribution so the final cost could be even higher.  Art!

     No details of performance in May yet.  Conrad confidently predicts it will be pulled from all but a handful of cinemas and then sold to Netflix.

King Piggy Gets Peggy

Conrad uses the slang 'peg' for 'tooth', just so we're clear.  This Item allows me to use another awful photo of Donnie Dorko.  Art!

     He looks like he's sucking a lemon.  ANYWAY there are questions being raised about a trip he took to a dental surgeon in Florida, because the White House has it's own dental surgery, a fact I was entirely ignorant of.  We may never know the truth.  But it's fun to speculate.

Whilst We're Making Cheap Shots At Cheap Sh-

The repellent crook Rudy Giuliani, a former acquaintance of the Saggy Senile Sepia Sackbut, has been taken to hospital.  Predictably, cruel jokes are making the rounds about him.

Captain Obvious

@TheFungi669

Just in: Rudy Giuliani has been hospitalized. He’s in hypocritical condition and he’s dyeing.

Art!

His finest moment

Droning On Again

I need a wordy Item to hit the Word Count, so we're heading back to Mordorvia and how things are going in Barad Duh.  There's an interesting illustration on Twitter by 'Jay In Kyiv', who needs to be treated with a certain caution, given that they were posting 'Prune60's railway data with no attribution.  Art!

     What you have here are SAM sites where missiles, radar and guns are concentrated, having been stripped out from any other locations, in order to try and protect the May 9th Victory Parade, since the Kozaky aren't participating in a truce.  There are 280 units allegedly protecting Moscow.

     HOWEVER - for the second time today - Art!

     What you're seeing here is Mosfilmovskaya Street, where a high-rise apartment building was hit by a Ukrainian drone.  Since a civilian apartment isn't the kind of target the Kozaky select, it had probably been spoofed by electronic warfare kit.  But it's not a good look a mere 5 days before the big parade.  I bet Putinpot is chewing the carpet with rage at the news.

Finally -

Going out with a Biercism.

"Interregnum, n: The period during which a monarchical country is governed by a warm spot on the cushion of the throne.  The experiment of letting the spot grow cold has commonly been attended by most unhappy results from the zeal of many worthy persons to make it warm again."

Three Day Weekend!

Which Is Great

Although the weather is rather depressing, being cold and overcast with occasional rain.  May - do better!  As for me, I may - do you see wh O you do - break open that bottle of cherry beer.  As for Mordorvia, they are scaling back plans to celebrate 9th May, which is where they boast about winning the Second Upleasantness, usually ignoring the fact that they also started it.  Because Putinpot wants this to go off without a hitch, he's been pressuring his poodle in the White House to put pressure on Prez Zed to have May 9th be a day of truce.  Unfortunately for Putinpot, the Big Orange Oaf Himself has no cards when it comes to the Kozaky, whom are not agreeing to a truce.  Conrad can guarantee there will be no air element if the parade goes ahead, in order to give air defences a clear sky to work in.  This is why Barad Duh is surrounded by 280 SAM systems whilst Tuapse has none.  Art!

The sole tank present in 2025

     There won't be any heavy equipment present if the parade goes ahead, as there's none left.  Conrad keeps joking that the T-34 will be replaced by a T-26, a tank model 100 years old.

      ANYWAY now that we've made Dimya cry, let's look at the links.

2025

BOOJUM!: "Do You Think That's Wise, Sir?"

2024

BOOJUM!: A Meta-Fiction For The Ages

2023

BOOJUM!: If I Were To Say "Baba Yaga"

2022

BOOJUM!: A Diet Of Flies

2021

BOOJUM!: Lava, Meet Tongue

2020

BOOJUM!: Shades Of Schadenfreude

2019

BOOJUM!: Hello, Coincidence Hydra

2018

BOOJUM!: Napalm Trees

2017

BOOJUM!: Rochdale: A Town Reprieved

2016

BOOJUM!: Don't Get Me Started - About "Uncharted"

2015

BOOJUM!: Hot Snood Party At The Rectory Tonight!

2014

BOOJUM!: As It Stands, I Sit

If I Were To Say 'Kursk'

You'd Be Forgiven For Thinking That I Was Yarking On About -

The Battle of Kursk, July 1943, which has become a touchstone of the Sinister Union and then Mordorvia.  To sum up the whole battle would take several whole blogs, so you only get a potted version here.  

     Picture the scene: Nazi Germany under Herr Schickelgruber had lost the initiative on the Eastern Front and had just suffered swingeing defeats at Stalingrad, El Alamein and the complete loss of North Africa.  Ol' Schicky needed to get back in the game and establish dominance, so he was going to attack.  Art!

     The plan was to attack the Kursk salient, a giant bulge into Teuton lines, from the north and south simultaneously, cutting off the defending troops in an encirclement or 'kessel'.  

     Unfortunately for the Teutons, the Sinister's were very well aware of their opponent's plans, thanks to a spy ring operating in Germany and carefully collated Enigma information provided from GREAT BRITAIN*.  Thus their salient was enormously well-defended.  It also helped that Ol' Schicky kept postponing the start date in order to have the newly-developed Panther tanks take part.  Art!

     
     The Teuton advances were very limited and came at great cost.  They still inflicted more losses than they suffered but we're talking about the Sinister Union here, where human life had little to no value.  Then came the counter-attacks, and the strategic initiative on the Eastern Front was permanently lost to the Teutons.

    OR I might be talking about the dramatic and sudden irruption across the Ukranian border in August of 2024, when the Kozaky boldly invaded the Kursk oblast.  Art!

'Pirozhok' means a small stuffed bun

     This hadn't been done since 1945.  The Ukrainians wisely kept the operation a total secret from the South Canadians, since the Biden administration was desperately trying to find an 'off-ramp' for Putin, thank you Jake 'The Brake' Sullivan, and would have forbidden it to be carried out.  Once it was in progress they instantly cut off all intel to the Ukrainians, a crucial loss.

     I remember the televised meeting that Putinpot had with Shoigu and Belousev, with Gerasimov blathering drivel on a wall monitor.  Art!

     Poor Dimya!  He looked as if he had toothache in his anus, so miserable was he.  The attack by the Kozaky wasn't a quick raid as in the past, it was a full-on occupation that required all orc reserves to be shifted to counter it.  They still have a toe-hold across the border, which orc media are forbidden to mention.

     But NO!  I am actually whanging on about the Ruffian submarine 'Kursk', which is the subject of another 'Be Amazed' video compilation of horribly expensive mistakes.  Conrad recommends this channel as it provides background information and has actually done research on the subject matter.  Art!

K-141

     Here the Kursk is as it's supposed to be, floating.  In August of 2000 it was carrying out training exercises in the Barents Sea, when hydrophones detected an initial explosion, followed by a much larger one, in it's vicinity.   The crippled submarine sank in over 300 feet of water, with only 23 of the 118 crew surviving.

     Here's when BA gets the facts wrong.  They state 'Sadly, international rescue teams failed to reach them in time.'  Nope.  GREAT BRITAIN* and Norway both immediately offered help in rescuing the trapped crew, only to be refused by the Ruffians.  Putin had only just taken power and probably didn't want to look weak by relying on The Hideous West.  Ruffian rescue efforts took days to materialise, thanks to incompetence.  So the 23 survivors died, too.  Art!

     This girning bafune is Marshal Igor Sergeyev, chief Ruffian military man at the time, who floated the possibility that the Kursk had hit another submarine - The Hideous West rearing it's alleged head again - or hit a mine or bomb left over from WW2.

     In fact a Naval Board found that one of the torpedoes had defective welding, allowing the leak of hydrogen peroxide fuel, which GREAT BRITAIN* abandoned 70 years ago as being too dangerous.  It reacts explosively with copper.  Guess what had lots of copper content?  Art!

    Yes, Ruffian torpedoes.  The faulty torpedo exploded, which triggered all the other torpedoes to explode, blowing off the bow of the submarine.  Fourteen months later the orcs retrieved most of the hull.  Art!

     It cost a lot to manage this.  Art!

     Remember, this is Ruffia, so $60 million was embezzled or stolen.  The Kursk itself was reckoned to have cost $1 billion to construct, of which $900 million would have been embezzled or stolen, because Italian mansions don't come cheap.

'Monte Cassino: Ten Armies In Hell' By Peter Caddick Adams

Getting it down from the Book Cave has proved fruitful, and reinforces the fact that poor or non-existent staff work seriously affected the Allies trying to storm Monte Cassino.  I shall quote from Page 155: "the string-and-sealing wax nature of Freyberg's New Zealand Corps, (with no dedicated corps staff)".  Art!

      Also, from Page 156: "This is where the lack of a corps staff really counted: with a dedicated chief of staff and good planning team, Freyberg's officers could have lobbied for Tuker's plan effectively to the prickly and hostile Clark."

     Tuker's plan was to scale the mountains north-east of Cassino and make an indirect approach to the abbey, with his 4th Indian division troops who were skilled in mountain warfare.  I shall keep you informed.

More Gentle Shoeing

I have discovered a couple more awful photographs of King Piggy on Twitter, but will only subject you to one.  Art!

Unsure if 'were-hog' is better than 'were-toad'

  He looks as if his morning toilette involved sticking his face in the gravy boat.  Note the hilarious contrast between his sepia skin and pale white ears, and he must have put swimming goggles on to protect his eyes.  Will he make it to the mid-terms?  Only time will tell.

Oil's Well That Ends Well

Rather than having tourists visiting their resort city on the Black Sea, the governor is now evacuating residents of Tuapse thanks to the close proximity of the burning refinery and storage depot, now hit by four waves of Kozaky drones.  'Jake Broe' has speculated that these drones are approaching Tuapse from over the sea, meaning there is no warning of their arrival.  The orcs could put patrol boats or naval vessels offshore, to try to detect and shoot down the drones, except that they make themselves sitting ducks for Sea Baby drones.  Art!

     These containers are being filled by people wielding shovels.  Jake also noted that a lot of the clean-up was being done by women, and wondered, waspishly,  where all the men had gone?

Number Nine Isn't Fine

We're up to the runner-up on Rotten Tomatoes list of films that earned 0% in reviews, a flick called 'One Missed Call', dating from 2008.  It's a remake of a Japanese horror film, about a woman whose friends start dying after receiving voicemails, which is another reason never to trust mobile phones.  Art!

     So, going by the rule of 50%, it made back $22.5 million, on a $20 million budget, so after adding on promotion, advertising and distribution, it undoubtedly lost money.  Well done, Warner Bros, it takes rare talent to make a loss on a horror film.  Which is why there was no sequel.  Art!

*  It irks Horse-face Lavrov when I say this.  Tee hee!