From V.I.P. To R.I.P.

Firstly, Neither Of Those Are What You're Thinking Of

After all, we wouldn't be BOOJUM! if we didn't meander, obfuscate and misdirect and this Intro - which may become the whole daily blog - is no ecxeption

     Now, you are probably wondering which 'Very Important Person' is going to be marched up as clickbait, such as Alec Trench, Vigdis Finsbogadottir or Bono.  

     None of the above! since the 'V.I.P.' stands for 'Venice In Peril', that being the record label for Thomas Dolby's epic debut album 'The Golden Age Of Wireless'.  Art!

Essential listening

     For that second acronym, you were expecting 'Requisat In Pacem', that being the Latin <hack spit> for 'Rest In Peace'.  Not really, not quite.  You see, inspired by Tom, it means 'Ruffia In Peril'.  I'm going to be mashing together 4 different Youtube channels, all of which were reporting bad things for Mordorvia.

Update: lower down I speculate as to how long this Intro might be.  Well, it's the whole of today's blog.  Just to be clear.

Inside Russia: Paranoia, Panic, Powerless and Penniless

Big K put up a couple of photographs of Putin attending the big memorial cemetery in Saint Petersburg, on the anniversary day when the Nazi siege of the same city with a different name - Leningrad - was lifted in 1944.  Art!

     That's the Bunker Gargoyle Midget on the red carpet.  You can see Putinpot's bodyguards off to port, a military band and more bodyguards loitering to starboard.  Big K's point is that normally, on an anniversary like this, the cemetery would be absolutely heaving with people paying their respects.  However, since Peter The Average is now utterly paranoid about being assassinated, and with good cause, the whole place was sealed off.  It's also fittingly symbolic about his total isolation.  Art!

When Priggy got jiggy

     He also detected a sense of panic in the Kremlin that has occurred at several events in the past: realisation that the SMO was a failure in April '22; the Ukrainian counterattack in September '22; the Wagner Group mutiny of June '23; August '24 when Ukraine invaded Kursk oblast.  Other contemporary panic symptoms are of Peskov, Kremlin press secretary blathering about the economy, the legalisation of online gambling (?) and the high level diplomacy being conducted either for real or show.  

     What are they panicking about?  O I thought you'd never ask!  "The Numbers".

     Inflation in the first two weeks of 2026 is now 33% of the whole anticipated amount for the entire year.  Ooops.

     2 million orcs are now without power, including 500,000 in Murmansk, the city inside the Arctic Circles in winter, and the nearby port of Severomorsk.  You know, the port that harbours the orc's SLBM ballistic missile subs,

     1.5% of their GDP is being printed every week.  Can you say 'hyperinflation'?

Anna From Ukraine:  The Numbers

Following on in more detail than Big K, Art!

     

Associate Professor and Doctor of Philosopy

     I like me clever women.  ANYWAY Anna was describing the latest data put out by the Ruffian Ministry Of Finance - official orc statistical info - and how very bad things are.  The isolation of Putin referred to earlier is mirrored in the real world for Mordorvia itself, diplomatically, politically and economically.  Consequently, there have been severe economic impacts on the federal budget.  The revenue stream for January 2026 from oil and gas sales is $5.1 billion, which sounds impressive until you realise it's a 50% cut from January 2025.  Art!

    Texas has a bigger economy that Ruffia, and since the SMO the Ruffian GDP will have fallen still further.  

     Aaaand what about oil prices?  Anna said, with a cheery smile, that Urals crude is now selling at <drum roll cymbal crash> $27 dollars per barrel, which increased the budget deficit of Mordorvia by another $131 billion, and yet another reason taxes are being raised as high as possible, to compensate for lost tax on the oil.  Art!

Squeeze the serfs and make them pay!

     State Mineral Extraction Tax is down 60%, Export Duties down 40%, an aggregate of 50%.  The total percentage of oil and gas tax revenues is now down to 2% of GDP, when it used to be 14%.  
     Rosneft and Lukoil, the two major oil industry businesses, are now wearing out their trousers at the knee, begging for state federal subsidies.

Dog Buns, I'm going to just continue with this Intro for the whole blog, and if you don't like it, you can sue me.

Joe Blogs: Ruffia Derailed:  Old King Coal

Ruffia's primary hydrocarbon exports are oil and gas, with coal running third as the ugly duckling, yet still a substantial source of income.  Until now.  Art!

     Joe put this chart up to illustrate that although the domestic use of coal is very small, the amount used for power plants is immense, which is why coal is still in extensive use globally, to the tune of 8.8 billion tons per annum.  Ruffia used to be a prominent exporter of coal before the SMO - a phrase that crops up O so often - yet now 75% of coal businesses are running at a loss.  20 coal companies closed their doors and sbuttered in 2025, because coal mining and selling operates on small profit margins.  One ton of coal, for example, nets 1/5 of profits of a ton of oil.  Art!

Coal moved via Ruffian railroads, which are a disaster story in itself

     Why the descent into chaos?  Because prior to the Special Idiotic Operation, Ruffia exported huge amounts of coal to the EU via a very efficient road and rail network.  Come the war and sanctions, they have had to pivot and sell to India and China, supplied by far less efficient road and rail logistics.    Plus, India and China demand steep discounts, and there is a risk of direct and secondary sanctions being imposed.  If India stops buying Ruffian oil, will they also stop buying Ruffian coal?  One supposes we shall see.

     Joe also reported hard data.  In 2024 the Ruffian coal industry ran to a loss of ₽112 billion, or $1.4 billion; in 2025 they ran to a loss of ₽350 billion, or $4.6 billion, trebling the deficit.  In 2026, if the coal industry goes bankrupt and dies on it's bottom, we're talking about 200,000 direct and indirect employees being affected.  Art!

The Russian Dude: When even blood money becomes too expensive

Artem, whose English vocabulary is better than a lot of English folk, and an accent you could slice and butter which is why subtitles are available, tackled Ruffian recruitment of orcs into their mass murder machine, which is not going well.  Art!

     That's an old picture, he now has a beard resembling a doormat nailed to his chin.  ANYWAY AGAIN he had a powerful description about why orcs sign up to die in Ukraine: "Poverty, debt and desperation are powerful motivators".  The sign-up bonuses in the provinces are being slashed, by up to 75% or the bare legal minimum.  Why?  Because the federal budget deficit in 2025 within 7 months rocketed to $61 billion, more than four times the target account, with ₽2 trillion spent on recruitment (a 40% increase).  Thus the cuts.

     HOWEVER the number of greedy or stupid or greedy and stupid orcs in 2025 taking contractsl fell to their lowest level in two years.  No or low bonus payments has throttled volunteers.

     Hmmm we're already at Word Count and I've not used the 'Silicon Curtain' notes I made, so I think we'll call it quits at this point.

The Stuff Of Life

I Am, Of Course - Obviously! - Talking About Bread

Not the band, before you quizzically narrow your eyes in confusion, as Conrad is not known for a love of soft-rock bands, which in my mind veer dangerously close to pop.

     ANYWAY as a picture of a loaf is a bit boring here's the album cover for their hot platter 'Manna', which is a terrible pun I can only approve of.  Art!

     I have somewhat perverted the original saying 'Bread is the staff of life', a proverb from the 17th century that takes it's cue from the Bible, such as the quotation in John 6:35 'And Jesus said unto them I am the bread of life'.  Art!

A pub in Todmorden

     More generally 'Stuff' because I hope to include more in this Intro than merely loaves.  We'll see if I get around to that.

     So, today's Intro is derived from a couple of paragraphs in Janet Macdonald's seminal 'Supplying The British Army On The Western Front'.  Art!

     I am looking at the chapter 'Food and Drink', wherein the sheer enormity of managing the logistics of catering to an army of 1.8 million men in France and Flanders is laid bare.  There were three British army bakeries in France: at Calais, Le Havre and Boulogne.  Art!

     

Dough being made at Calais

     At Calais, a bakery staff of 1,000 worked in the four field corps bakeries, capable of turning out 900,000 pounds of loaves per day, which comes in at a shade over 400 tons of bread (!).  The staff worked in three shifts around the clock, and since there were no machines to mix dough, it was all made by hand.  With all that kneading they must have had biceps big as watermelons!  Each shift turned out seven batches of bread per shift.  Art!

Field bakery company

     At Le Havre, the field bakery went through 1,000 sacks of flour daily, meaning 98,000 pounds, or 44 tons, requiring 54 tons of water to make dough.  The greatest output of bread amounted to 150 tons in a single day.  Art!

     The field bakery at Boulogne was larger than that at Le Havre but smaller than Calais, being able to produce 530,000 pounds of bread, or 236 tons daily, needing 290 tons of water for the dough.  Bread was not baked at night as a precaution against air raids, dough being produced instead.  Also at Boulogne were large bread stores, fourteen of them, capable of accommodating 900,000 two-pound loaves - being an awesome total of 5,625 tons if they were ever filled to capacity.  The problem with holding this many loaves is that many would go stale, mouldy or attacked by vermin before they could be issued, being far above what the army needed on a daily basis. Art!

     This is actually a storehouse of South Canadian flour on it's way to provide relief for Belgian civilians, but it gives you an idea of how enormous the scale of supplying bread was.  That first 'wall' of 80 sacks would come in at almost 8,000 pounds of flour.  At Boulogne, there was a special flour hangar, where sacks of flour could be kept clean and dry, to the mass of over 4,500 tons.

    Don't forget this is just supplying bread. 

     The we have the wily old General Long, who was the Director Of Supplies at the War Office - none of this namby-pamby PC nonsense about 'Defence'!- whom Ol' Jan does not glorify with a first name, nor whether he was a Major-General or Lieutenant-General or a Brigadier-General, so I have not been able to identify him properly.  Art!

The War Office, looking all aggressive

     You see, when war broke out, a lot of manufacturers looked to make a killing, if you'll pardon the expression.  The price of sugar soared from 12 shillings and thruppence per hundredweight* to as much as 56 shillings, blatant profiteering.  General Long called the principal sugar merchants into his offices, explained to them that he knew exactly how much sugar was in their warehouses, also that he had already placed guards upon them to stop anything leaving.  Customs and Excise had agreed that nothing would leave these warehouses under bond until the army's needs were satisfied.  Long offered them the opportunity to accept the price of 12s 3d or he would seize the sugar and pay for it at the end of the war.

     They took the deal.

Gibber The Whut

There is a Nork on Twitter that I follow, and by default I have to mean the Norwegians, as the miserable serfs of Norkland way out east think a garden gate is frighteningly advanced technology.  He's put up one of the most hideous AI generated images of the Saggy Senile Sepia Sackbut imaginable, which Conrad simply had to Bookmark and share.  Art!

     Predictably it got all the MAGA crown frothing with anger, hurling insults at 'Glenn Tunes' and Norway because their delicate fee-fees were hurt.  Good!

As I Keep Explaining, We Are Living In The Future

A couple of months ago Your Humble Scribe witnessed a few on-line videos of Ukrainian Unmanned Ground Vehicles, which one wag described as 'lawnmowers with machine guns'.  Art!

UGV TWW 12.7

     Side orientation.  Buff paint scheme for summer terrain.  Art!

     Here you see it up close with puny human for scale.  Note that the machine gun here is the Browning 'Ma Deuce' .50 calibre i.e. half-an-inch, which is 12.7 in millimetres.  This thing has a terrific punch and can kill orcs out in the open a mile away.  It has cameras for remote viewing and night-vision.

     One of these captured 3 orcs in the Zaporizhzhia oblast.  One presumes it has a speaker and talks like a Dalek, for maximum terror.  Although maximum terror if they were made autonomous.  DO YOU WANT SKYNET?  BECAUSE THIS IS HOW YOU GET SKYNET!

Get Out Of Here With Your Clickbait!

Yes yes yes, I know EXACTLY how ironic that alarum is.  Suck it up and sue me.  Art!

     Sounds scary, nicht wahr?  Apart from one thing.  Art!

     Less the gutter press than the sewer press.  They make Fox News look impartial and analytical.  Get out of here!

     There may be a risk of King Piggy trying to threaten Vietnam for not bowing down and worshiping his scrofulitic hide, but, and a but in neon letters ten feet tall, the last South Canadian involvement in Vietnam did not end well for South Canadian geo-political power.

     On the other hand, Vietnam hasn't fought a was since 1979 and all the territorial and main-force units have absolutely no experience of combat.

     On the other hand - only two mentioned so far - South Canada is currently embroiled in Venezuela and shortly to be embroiled in Iran.  How much force-projection do they possess, and what would be the strategic aim of invading Vietnam?  Art!

     Sorry, this was supposed to be a picture and caption.  Conrad bloviating again.

You What?

Apologies for using a second illo from my news feed, I couldn't let it lie.  Art!

    

     Erm - the railway in Great Britain - I have to call it that to offend 'Horseface' Lavrov - did not exist for another 200 years after 1621.  The Stockton and Darlington Railway came into operation in 1825.  You can see the discrepancy there.  Do they mean that railways were established along roads that had been laid down from 1621 onwards, making them a permanent way?  Keep away from me, clickbait.

Finally - 

Going out with a Biercism again, thank you Ambrose Gwinnet.

"Club,n: An association of men for the purposes of drunkenness, gluttony, unholy hilarity, murder, sacrilege and the slandering of mothers, wives and sisters.  For this information I am indebted to several estimable ladies, their husbands being members of several clubs."

*  In PROUD IMPERIAL weights, 112 pounds.

From The Zenith To The Nadir

That's Me Being All Philosophical 

You see, we're going from the very highest creative concepts in literature - some of which are so high they are beyond my ken - to the basest behaviours of Hom. Sap. although no, we're not talking Office Lunch Thieves <hack spit>.  Art!

Close enough

     This is a tale of the seedy, the greedy and the weedy, as it concerns a large landscaping business in South Canada, which had grown from humble beginnings to a large organisation employing many full-time crews, doing residential and commercial work and with a side-gig of snow removal in winter.  It had taken the Acerbic Landscaping BUsiness Manager (and her hubbo), hereafter ALBUM, 15 years to get this entity into the lucrative company it was.

     Enter Dubious Integrity Salaried Knowall, hereafter DISK, who was employed as the book-keeper and accountant at this firm, whom ALBUM cordially detested, considering office workers to be one step lower than slugs on the ladder of life.   She had a severe case of Swollen Head Syndrome Art!

     DISK performed payroll, accounts receivable and payable, taxes, insurance claims and suppliers, for a business with sixty employees, which meant that she knew where the commercial bodies were buried.  Bear in mind that DISK had been working there for 6 years by the time she narrated this story, and had done NOTHING to curb any of the frankly illegal work practices of ALBUM.  Which is why she's down as 'Dubious Integrity'.

    Some examples of what she observed: employees being paid cash instead of direct deposit; classifying other employees as 'contractors' so she didn't have to pay taxes or Medicare; skimming cash payments for customer; fraudulently listing family assets as company ones; claiming vacations were business outings.  Art!

     That isn't a swimming pool - it's a 'client entertainment facility'.

     Aware that being involved in all this illegal activity, DISK kept meticulous records on everything, stored at home to be secure.  After six years she'd had enough of the rank dishonesty and got employment elsewhere with an accounting firm paying a lot better and minus shenanigans.  Art!

     Hopefully this gives you a flavour of how horrid and unscrupulous ALBUM was.  The crunch came when DISK handed in her two-week notice, because ALBUM, as petty and spiteful as she was, refused to pay for the three weeks leave DISK was owed, a sum of $4,000.  Stick a pin in that total, as it comes back to haunt ALBUM.  She poo-pooed DISK when she warned that this was illegal, having, as I have said, a severe case of I Can Do No Wrong Syndrome.

     DISK, upon leaving, instantly went to the State Labour Board, an organisation that takes 'wage theft' very seriously indeed, whom found in her favour and ordered ALBUM to pay her $6,000, which wound the latter up into a frothing rage.  She spread lies over social media and tried to get DISK fired from her new employer.  Art!

     

     I did mention about knowing where the bodies were buried?

     Surprise!  DISK went over her records and calculated ALBUM had avoided paying at least $1,000,000 in taxes and that was only over the six years she'd been working there.  She contacted a tax attorney and between the two of them they set about comprehensively organising and arranging all the evidence: bank statements, cash receipts, payroll records, tax filings and vendor invoices.  There was so much it took a month.

     THEN she filed a complaint with the Department Of Labour about wage theft, and then another with the Internal Revenue Service about the tax avoidance.  The IRS, in case you don't know, has the attention and focus of a bulldog armed with tungsten-carbide tipped teeth when it comes to tax avoiders.  All this over $4,000.  Who'd have thought.  Art!

     Meanwhile, the state labour board had carried out an audit, so ALBUM had to reclassify half her employees and pay their back taxes, and penalties.  The Department Of Labour was also prowling about wage theft allegations.

     Then the IRS paid a visit and walked out with a shedload of documents and her computers.  Erk!  This resulted in the company's accounts being frozen.

     THEN the state labour board hit ALBUM with back taxes and fines that came to $300,000.  O how reasonable $4,000 seems now!

     THEN the IRS chimed in.  ALBUM owed over $1.2 million in taxes, which, boosted by fines and interest - yes, they backtracked to six years prior - came to $2 million.  Or, if you like, 500 times the original $4,000.  O how reasonable that seems now!

     The state then went after her business and personal assets to seize in order to make the payments.  ALBUM had to sell the whole business at a loss of 70%.  This still wasn't sufficient so the state made her sell both her home and vacation home to make up the reimbursement.  Art!

ALBUM's final destination?

     No mention of ALBUM's situation at the end, but given that she was jobless, homeless, carless and penniless it can't have been fun.  All thanks to refusing $4,000.  What a nadir.

     The killing joke was that DISK got a substantial monetary reward from the IRS' whistleblower program.

Time For More Gentle Shoeing!

Once again we are indebted to that Romanian son of NAFO, 'Daractenus' and his hilariously satirical take on upmarket Ruffian towns and cities.  Art!

     This is 'Nikel', a city based around - you may be ahead of me here - nickel.  Because Barad-Duh thinks only woke Westerners suffer from pollution-related illnesses, it is an incredibly unhealthy place to live or work.  Art!

     That's the city's nickel smelter, which explains the barren ground in the top photo, as it's fumes kill off all plant life, and which irks the nearby Norwegians, as it's close to the border.  Reputedly, the fumes occasionally blew back into the city and were toxic enough to burn holes in umbrellas.  I expect the locals hack and cough like 80-per day smokers.  What a pearl!

An Update On 'Melania'

The terrible vanity-project undertaken to flatter the Saggy Senile Sepia Sackbut, as the lady in question - perhaps I should say 'woman' in question - is his wife. The box office is not looking any too healthy.  Art!

     Some of the MAGA crowd have been braying about how cinemas were packed out and it was standing room only, without providing anything like, you know, photos or evidence.  On the evidence of the above, they are living in la-la land, just like DJ Tango.


Rather Than Tanks

I'm putting up another Terence Cuneo artwork, this one of heavy industrial excavation plant.  Art!

    This one has the title "Walking dragline excavator on an opencast coal site Whitley Bay"  and is dated 1950.  Note how Ol' Tel works in a specimen of Hom. Sap. to show the sheer scale of this behemoth.  Conrad is a bit unsure quite what a 'walking dragline' is and will enquire.  Art!

     Yes, they are able to 'walk' thanks to two enormous 'feet' placed on each side of their chassis, at about the same speed as a snail.  The huge bucket you see in Ol' Tel's painting is capable of holding up to 220 tons of burden.  The whole thing is so enormous it's constructed on site, as there's no way you could transport one of them along roads or railways.  When the strip mine is exhausted one presumes they are broken down and moved to the next one.

"This Book Is Full Of Spiders" By David Wong

Following in the footsteps of 'John Dies At The End', this is another bonkers entertaining novel featuring David, John and Amy.  Also Molly the Irish setter.  It is a mix of ghastly horror and fizzing comedy, neither of which I'm going to refer to today.  Art!

      Meet the Gladiator Unmanned Ground Vehicle, as used by the South Canadian Marines, and which is mentioned in the text, where it serves to keep the quarantined in the quarantine zone.  David also mentions hi-spec UAVs, circling the Q zone, armed with precision machine guns, night vision and Hellfire missiles, which is quite prescient given that the novel was written in 2012.

Finally -

Going out on a pithy Biercism.

"Rude,adj: Reminding a lady of the good times you had forty years ago."

How J G Ballard Invented 'Waterworld'

If You Want To Define 'Production Hell'

'Waterworld' is your go-to film.  Kevin Costner learned a very expensive lesson in why shooting films at sea is always tricky, not to mention costly, and that you cannot control the elements.  The original set sank, having to be replaced at considerable cost, there were delays imposed by re-writes of the script, , the production cost ballooned to $175 million and the world press jumped on it before filming finished as 'washed up'.  Art!

     It made $132 million at the box office, but before you jeer or cheer, it did make an eventual profit when released on video and then on television.  

     What does an Hollywood blockbuster have to do with Ballard, one of the most depressing authors in sci-fi?  O, I thought you'd never ask!  

     In case you missed it, we are now back into the final Intro dealing with '68 Philosophical Sci-Fi Books That Will Melt Your Mind' from the Youtube channel 'Sci-Fi Odyssey'.  Art!

     At No. 8, meet The Drowned World, By J G Ballard, arch-miserablist (1962).  The title says it all: protracted and violent solar storms have affected the Earth's ionosphere, allowing far more solar radiation to reach the Earth's surface, resulting in the sea levels rising enormously.  Some 70 years after this catastrophe, a scientific expedition from the North Pole - now temperate and livable - attempts to catalogue the flora and fauna that inhabit a vast lagoon covering London.  They find a landscape turned tropical, with giant alligators and iguanas holding sway.

     If this sounds exciting, sit back down.  Ballard is more interested in the psychological breakdown suffered by expedition members than anything that might raise your pulse.  Despite being recognised as the primary work in climate change sci-fi, it's never been filmed or televised, because who would want to watch 90 minutes of people having a mental breakdown and psychological regression?

No. 7: Midshipman's Hope by David Feintuch (1994).  Another Nope.  Let me dig.  Ah, a member of that subset known as 'military science fiction'.  In this case, the ascension to command of a starship by the 17-year old Midshipman Nicholas Seafort, after a series of unfortunate events - hmmm that sounds familiar - kill all the other officers.  Art!

     FYI, a Midshipman was the lowest form of officer on a Royal Navy warship, worth considerably less than the experienced petty officers, since he was there to - you may be ahead of me here - gain experience.

     Sounds like the complete counterpoint to Ballard.

No. 6: The Hidden Girl by Ken Liu (2020).  Yet another Nope.  Urgh, the blurb claims that it's a work of 'speculative fiction', which always makes Conrad shudder in distaste.  If it's sci-fi, CALL IT sci-fi and don't be so Dog Buns pretentious.  A collection of short stories.  Art!

     I can see her pretty plainly, but perhaps that's just the new varifocals.

     ANYWAY because it's a short story collection, any descriptive blurb is terse and economical with the words.  It seems to be highly contemporary, dealing with issues such as cryptocurrency and AI, the first of which is a scamble and the latter possibly Hom. Sap. creating it's own demise.

No. 5: Axiomatic By Greg Egan (1995).  Him again! and another Nope.  Let me go trawl teh Interwebz.  Oho and aha, another short story collection, stuff he wrote in the late Eighties and early Nineties.  Art!

     Mr. Egan is known for his 'hard sci-fi' narratives, meaning that what he writes is scientifically plausible, coherent and consistent.  No light sabres or anti-gravity, sorry.  The blurb does mention brain implants and dolphins speaking in limericks.  Flipper heck.  I shall nick a bit of the expository on teh Interwebz:

Explores the nature of reality, identity, free will, and the impact of technology on humanity. 

     Nothing too heavy then.

No. 4 - 1:  Downbelow Station; Merchanter's Luck; Cyteen; Regenesis By C J Cherryh  (1981, 1982, 1988, 2009)

Yes, I'm cheating here by doing 4 at once.  Sue me, see if I care.  The only one of this quartet I've read is DS, probably 40 years ago.  Her actual surname - gasp! another female sci-fi author! - is 'Cherry' but she added the extra 'H' because her editor said her real name sounded like a woman who wrote Mills & Boon books.

     ANYWAY IIRC DS is another military sci-fi subgenre entry.  Art!

     The novel is set in a future where Earth and it's rebellious colonies are waging war on each other, and the station of the title is a strategically important space station orbiting the planet Pell's World in the Tau Ceti star system.  I seem to recall the narrative point of view jumping around a lot and <ahem> skipped the more boring chapters.

     AND with that I am done.  You can look those 3 others up, I've gotten the Word Count up to 800 and we can now move on to other topics for Intros.  You're welcome.

I Hope You Have A Strong Stomach

Conrad does.  I still remember Francine saying I ought to leave my body to science, as only then would the world discover my secret for not dying from food poisoning.  

      ANYWAY AGAIN, as you may remember I have been Bookmarking a few of the truly hideous photos of Donold Judas Trump on Twitter, and recently came across one that is new to me, which I will share with you.  Art!

     He looks as if he's chewing a lemon filled with broken glass and urine.  Also, who is that character from 'Preacher' he reminds me of?

     Ah yes that's the one Bottomholeface.  Who is actually a sweetie on the inside, which is not what you can say about King Piggy.

     Never mind 5 years of social media posts, a single week of BOOJUM! would get me permanently barred from South Canada.

How Very Apt!

Yesteryon we published a picture by Terence Cuneo, of a De Havilland Vampire jet fighter undergoing maintenance.  Today we have another of Tel's paintings, titled 'Construction Of The Manchester Metrolink', done in 1991.  Art!

     I think Tel has taken a bit of poetic licence here, as it's dry, bright and sunny, three words that tend not to apply to Gomorrah On The Irwell.   From the background detail, I think this is the Great Bridgewater Street Bridge.  Art!

Complete and from the opposite side

More Gentle Shoeing

Maybe not so gentle.  Sarah Paine, eminent academic and historian, was having a chat with Pyotr Kurzin on Youtube and gleefully wondered at what chance there was of Bunker Gargoyle Midget dying of a heart attack or stroke, due to the immense pressure he's under.  A non-zero chance, I assert.  If you catch him minus the makeup and special lighting, he looks haggard and ten years older than he really is.

     ANYWAY ANYWAY Art!

     "Pressurize Moscow", to round it off.  $22 per barrel is about half of what it costs to actually extract Urals crude.  Wowsers, this is bad for Mordorvia.  Their state budget for 2026 relied on oil selling for $59 dollars per barrel and now they're getting almost a third of that.  Someone in Moscow is going to be jumping from a window, or sipping on a tasty cup of polonium tea, even though everything is going according to plan.

     In a further note, I saw a news item saying three major Ruffian construction companies had gone bankrupt, and I wondered if there'd been a typo in the headline.  Art!

     Do they mean £900 million, perhaps?

     Nope.

SC Donstroy in the city of Rostov-on-Don collapsed into bankruptcy after accumulating a debt of 11 million rubles (£105,000).

     

    This is bonkers!  £105,000 is peanuts for a major business organisation, yet it goes toes-up without being able to refinance or negotiate credit or work out a payment plan or sell off some assets?  Things are indeed bad in Mordorvia.

     Which is great for me, it creates lots of content!

Finally -

More from my "QI Book Of Banter", which I like to sprinkle amongst the Biercisms.  

"Laws are like sausages.  It is better not to know how they are made." - Otto Von Bismark.  Ha!  Who would have thought that the Teuton's Iron Chancellor had such a sense of humour.