If I Were To Say 'Moonshine'

You Might Expect Me To Yark On About Illegal Alcohol

Not so!  Art?

     That's Axel, accompanied by Musky, his trusty sidekick whom he thinks is a boy but is in fact a girl - which is a whole other subplot I won't get into.

     ANYWAY Axel roams the cosmos, seeking the woman of his dreams.  Literally.  She's called 'Chimeer' and appeared to him in a dream.  Bit of a thin reason to go haring off across the cosmos if you ask me, but there are 31 volumes in this French comic series, so the fans seem to like it.

     Why am I yarking on about this?  O I thought you'd never ask - Art?

     I first encountered it in the pages of 'Pilote' where the dialogue was all in French.  The later copy I have is in English, which still doesn't properly explain the bonkers storyline.  What else can you expect from a work that translates as 'What Is Reality, Papa?'  Art!

     Yes, we come back to Philip K. Dick, a man whose work has been re-evaluated long after his death and judged to be worthy of enshrinement in South Canadian modern fiction.  Without that trashy 'sci-fi' labelling.

     ANYWAY AGAIN Ol' Phil had a telling response to the arch question 'What is reality?' with his quote that 'Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, does not go away.'

     Here an aside.  Yes, already!

MacBeth inspiring Godard?

     No it's not, MacBeth, you've had too much whisky again, go to bed and sleep it off.  Bumbletuck.

     ANYWAY ANYWAY talking about reality, there is a chapter in 'Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?' (a perfectly sound question, by the way) which completely flips the plot at that point, making you question everything you've read up to that point.  I shan't give any details, not for fear of spoilers but out of concern that old age and gin have confused the right novel.

     I think we've established enough about reality, so we can proceed to the main meat of the matter, which again is NIGHT OF THE PAGBEAST!  Inspired by the acronym 'Porky And Gross', yes we are going to be skewering the <deep breath> Sweaty Swollen Saggy Senile Sepia Sackbutt, Donold Judas Trump himself!

     Yes, again.  Conrad and a lot of other content creators will be bereft when BOOH keels over dead from a heart attack or is rendered into a (more) drooling vegetable, since he is such a consistent source of content.  Art!

Very very DonOLD

  Blimey, he looks dog rough there*.  Okay, if you don't follow the hilariously entertaining world of South Canadian politics, then you may be joyously unaware of the 'Trump-a-palooza' convention that was recently held in Dallas.  The planners were so inept that they didn't realise this clashed with the opening game of the South Canadian football** season.  Brian Tyler Cohen, a Youtube political pundit, explained the five most popular programs on South Canadian television: Football; football; football; football; mixed lawn tennis doubles - no, only joking, it's football again.  Would you fork out folding money to attend King Piggy yarking on - or watch football on the telly at home with a six-pack and chips?  Art!

     I have, contrarily, completely ignored Donnie Dorko's attempt to bribe voters, and instead have an image here of him about to board Hair Farce One, where his locks appear to gain sentience and try to escape from his head.

     Now, to quote The Nodfather, on his first night he bloviated "Not only is this packed, but you have an equal number of people standing outside."  Don't forget the organisers were pimping free tickets from Sunday onwards as ticket sales were disappointingly low.  Art!

     Notice the upper tiers are essentially empty and the middle tiers half-full at best.  What is reality, papa?  Trump and his cult will allege this is before the event began - it's not, you can hear Fat Caligula braying in the background of this clip.  Art!

     The camera pans to the centre of the arena and yes, there is DJ Tango at the 90-minute stage of his rant.  He claimed nobody had left, yet there are clearly lots of empty seats right here.  What is reality, papa?  At this point anyone who got a free ticket had gotten bored of Donold Trump's Greatest Hits monologue and left.  Art!

     The venue staffer who described the arena as '65% full' was either way off or describing it before the exodus.  Thanks to 'David Pakman' for putting up this clip, which the Wizard Lizard Gizzard party will hope nobody ever sees.

Trump says no one is leaving as AUDIENCE FLEES

     There's the link for you.  Tee hee!

     Art!

     These are further nails in the coffin.  Ol' Dave put up streaming figures for the event, and - they're bad.  Like, BAD.  Top port is 'Right Side Broadcasting' whose audience for Don Snoreleone during his first presidency were into five figures, meaning at least 100,000.  This one?  2,200.  'The Hill', at bottom starboard, had just 150.

     What is reality, papa?

     O, also, several major networks ignored the whole event and broadcast football instead.  One suspects that's where the missing audience members are.  Art!

     The event organisers always pack the seats behind any speaker, to give the impression that the venue is sold and packed out.  Dave then screenshots a Tweet made by 'Leah V', whose ability to sustain aural manure gave out after an hour.  Art!

     What is reality, papa?

     Don Snoreleone will salvage his pride by claiming that the empty seats were because those attendees had gone to the bathroom, and that the empty exterior is fake AI Democrat news carried out by Joe Biden in cahoots with Barak Obama, etcetera etcetera.

     What is reality, papa?  Well it's certainly not the world that DJ Tango inhabits.  Let's end this Intro with another horrible photo of Pumpkinhead.  Art!

     Splendid triple-chin you have there, Don.

Back To Brucie

A man who painted fantasies more elaborate than Pumpkinhead is capable of, here's another illo from the 'Sci-Fi Art' Youtube channel.  Art!

     Another one I'm not familiar with.  The implication is that this is a book or magazine cover, given the 'Title Gap' at the top of the artwork.  Brucie is plainly implying that this illustration is of the future, given that walking machine in the background.  I'm not sure quite what these - dogs? - are eating and don't care to examine too closely.  Allow me to dig a little - 

     Aha!  Art?

     It wasn't too hard, just Google 'Bruce Pennington cover dogs' and you'll get the same result.

Don't Tempt Me!

Conrad has a will of iron, and can prove it by stating that I never, not once, entered the Lego Shop in the Arndale Centre when I was working in the Tower.  Yes, I did stop to admire the different complete model kits the staff assembled and put on display BUT I NEVER WENT IN.  Art!

     For your information, 'O scale' is a reference to what scale a miniature is.  My own wargaming collection in 6 mm scale is either 'Z' scale or 'T' scale AND I DON'T WANT ANOTHER HOBBY thanks very much.

A Bit Of A Backlog

Your Humble Scribe can pat himself on the back for getting rid of his Bookmark collection on the hellscape Twitter, but yes I still have a backlog of Favourites on my browser bar and another collection of 'Watch Later' on Youtube.  Art!

     Dunno why there's a progress bar on the 'Hell's Angels' colourised version, I'm only 47 minutes into the original.  Also, I only have one item to cover from the 'How Not To Die' vlog, which I now realise I've been mistitling as 'How To Not Die'.  Old age, gin and plum sojou to blame.

     Right, the fridge beckons!

*  This is not a compliment.  Just to be clear.

**  Their version of rugby so I shan't call it 'ballfoot'

NIGHT OF THE PAGBEAST!

There I Was, Listening To The Rain

In that poetic turn of phrase Conrad remembers living through at a dark and dismal 24-service bus stop in Gomorrah-in-the-Irwell, "The Atlantic has paid a call".  Not unexpected, the heavens have been threatening a deluge all day long.  

     ANYWAY I was looking at a Tweet where Donold Judas Trump was lying about giving every South Canadian $5,000 if the Wizard Lizard Gizzard party survives the mid-term elections.  Nobody would get anything even if they won every seat going: King Piggy would deny ever having made such a statement, then call his recorded speech 'fake news' or 'AI', and then run away to cheat at golf.  Art!

     I then recalled that the Sweaty Swollen Saggy Senile Sepia Sackbutt* is going to be bloviating again at the Dallas convention on Thursday night - tonight as I'm typing this well ahead of posting it - and a new acronym for him popped into my brain: 'Porky And Gross'.  What can I say, I'm just naturally creative.  PAG.  Which triggered a vague memory of a sci-fi novel that had antagonists dubbed 'Pagbeasts', which, I then learned, were super-intelligent predatory animals inimically hostile to Hom. Sap.  Like SSSSSS, except their brains were not made of mashed potato.  Unfortunately I cannot find pictures of what a pagbeast looks like, so - Art!

A placeholder

     NIGHT OF THE PAGBEAST! was born.  We can follow it up with DAY OF THE PAGBEAST!  and DAWN OF THE PAGBEAST! and LATE MID-MORNING OF THE PA - well perhaps draw the line with that one.

     Day One of what others have dubbed the 'Trumplapalooza' proved embarrassing in terms of turn-out, where ticket purchases had been so low the local LWG party reps had resorted to desperate large-scale e-mailings pimping free tickets.  And the venue was still one-third empty.  Ooops.  Art!

"Bow down and worship your Presidential Pagbeast!"

     This is not especially surprising, as other, better-informed observers explained: Wednesday evening was the inaugural kick-off for the South Canadian football games, a major sporting event that the planners seem to have utterly overlooked.

     So, Fat Caligula wanted to make the event all about him him him, celebrating his Pagbeastiness.  Unsurprisingly to no one, bar a subset of politicos I shall come back to, party candidates with potentially tough races to manage chose to stay away.  They don't want to be associated with the bafune who brought in a hike in petrol prices, a tanking economy and an unpopular war with Iran.  They want to fight campaigns based on local issues and instead are having Pumpkinhead shackled to them.  Ooops again.  Art!

     Meanwhile the Pagbeast's recent activity includes, to quote one critic: " The president unleashed an hours-long, thirty-seven-post spree of AI-generated fantasies, including his own face on Hulk Hogan’s body, Trump on horseback beside George Washington, Trump commanding a robot army and Trump laying claim to the moon. He’s hardly projecting strength. He’s a man mentally unraveling in plain view and retreating into a digital fantasy world where apparently the crowds are infinite and the founding fathers gaze up at him admiringly**"

     Why is The Nodfather behaving thus?  Firstly, he refuses to accept that he can ever be wrong or do the wrong thing, which is why he still trots out 'They stole my election!' claim even at this convention.  Art!

     The second reason is that Trump is more concerned with having people he considers loyal around him than anyone competent, which has reduced his inner circle to a very small cadre indeed.  More examples of 'Dictatoritis' in action.  These bootlickers ensure to keep Trump isolated from indelicate things like how much he is actively hated, making sure that nothing bad ever crosses the Resolute Desk, in order to sustain his fantasy world.  Where he can bloviate on social media with AI images that sustain his Zeppelin-ego, you know, huge but fragile.  Art!

It ought to be 'Steven' but I enjoy winding him up

     This is Stephen Cheung, White House Communications Director, and one of the key players in the Keep Trumpy In A Bubble squad by being a media attack dog for Pumpkinhead.  For a Communications Director he is extremely bad at communicating, usually ranting and swearing at the press and journalists, but he's loyal to the Pagbeast so he gets to keep his job, in addition to be the only staffer who makes Donold look slim.  Relatively slim.

     Trump's Maris-Piper-blended-with-butter-and-cream brain may dimly perceive that the world does not dote on him as much as he hopes, so be prepared for a raft of reasons, excuses and lies before November 3rd.  If it does go badly for him, Stephen may be looking for a new job.

     No, this is not Politics, it is Entertainment and I only hope I have enough popcorn laid in.

     Coming soon - SUNSET OF THE PAGBEAST!

Old Man Vindicated

Let us combine two things here, my fear of mispronunciation and the academician and author Sarah Paine.  As mentioned previously, Your Humble Scribe is rather wary of mentioning Latin phrases or the authors of antiquity, for fear of being mocked by someone with a public school education who knows better.  Art!

     A very interesting book, which I re-read every few years.  What do I hear on a clip from 'The Global Gambit'?  Why none other than Sarah pronouncing it 'Thew-sid-id-ees' as I have been all these years alone.  Art!

     She stated that the South Canadian Naval War College has, it's first Case Study, 'The History Of The Peloponnesian War' and examines it from the perspective of Sparta being a Continentalist power, with Athens being a Naval power.

     Old dog validated.

I Am Sorely Tempted

You ought to know Conrad's attitude about all things that comes from his first question: Can you eat it?

     Okay, yesteryon I got a pack of 6 burgers going cheap in the chiller cabinet, except there were 8 when I checked on them later, and they now reside in the freezer, whereas the 4 burgers that were in the freezer are now defrosting.

     That's the background.  Art!

     Cheeseburger pizza.  Enough cholesterol to lay low a herd of brontosauri.

Pennington And On

More artworks from the slideshow 'Sci-Fi Art' put together featuring Bruce Pennington.  Art!

     Conrad not familiar with this one.  Fantasy setting?  Novel cover?  It does have the 'Title Gap' at the top to install the author's name and title, without covering up Bruce's art.  The location is obviously exotic, this isn't Tunbridge Wells or Sneddlepool Magna, and those skulls seemingly sport fangs not canines or incisors.  On the other hand, note the bright colour palette, implying less than loathsome.  Let me dig a little.  

     Nope.  No other copies of it anywhere with any description of it, not even a date.  Art!

     Unsuccessful Google-fu results.  Er - I think the title at lower starboard was acceptable currency before the Seventies.

Back To Those 20 Classic Novels

We are up to Number 16, publication date stretching from 1913 to 1927, an end date more than a decade after Kafka, the 1915 author of 'Metamorphosis'.  I just realised that Ol' Franny was writing his tome during the second year of the First Unpleasantness, when things were bad and getting worse, so you can see the reason his stuff is so bleak.  

     ANYWAY Art!

     'A La Recherche De Temps Perdue' in it's original M8 language.  I've never read it and have no compelling reason to do so, either, especially as it comes in 6 volumes.  I have a vague recollection of Proust's description of eating a madeleine, a type of French cake, which is typical of a man whose first thought is "Can you eat it?".  Supposedly about memory and recollection and guff stuff like that. 

     And with that I'm off to examine the contents of the fridge.  Chin chin!

*  May have to edit this, it's getting unhandily lengthy

**  From journo Miles Taylor, former Trump admin member

Phase Three

Not To Be Confused With -

 - a prequel to the film 'Phase IV', the sci-fi horror blend directed by Saul Bass and starring Nigel Davenport and the under-rated Michael Murphy, which yes I have seen and it's a corker - Art!

     'IV' being the Roman numerals for '4' and you're welcome.

     ANYWAY if we're not talking about intelligent ant colonies threatening Hom. Sap. what are we yarking on about?  O I thought you'd never ask.  Art!

     You see, in John's novel the alien arrival is Phase One, their abortive campaign against land-based Hom. Sap. is Phase Two, and Phase Three is their long, slow, melting of the icecaps and raising of sea levels.  This leads to absolute and utter catastrophe across the globe, especially for island nations like This Sceptred Isle, and coastal communities.  It takes years, mind, so Conrad is unsure how his miniseries adaptation is going to manage.  Phyllis could put on a bit of middle-aged spread and Phil could grow a beard?

     ANYWAY AGAIN I want to salute John for identifying a few key elements of an apocalypse, even if it comes without zombie spice.  For This Sceptred Isle is - you may be ahead of me here - an island, with limited ability to sustain it's population from native resources.  Come an apocalypse, how would we cope?  Art!

    Not very well.  We could sustain about 40 million people, rather than our current 70 million total, which means people eating people a drastic change in diet.  Even in 1953, when TKW was written, the population was 50 million.  Without allowing for low-lying farmland being submerged.  Allow me to explicate. 

     "But later on the way is going to be the other way round: finding out where the chaps who do have some left are hiding it - and that's going to be nasty." 

     Art!

     A film you definitely need to see, and here because it illustrates John's next point: "There are fearful tales about the guerilla warfare between starving bands that goes on in Devon, Somerset and Dorset-" as IHH has a couple of scenes portraying just what John describes.

     For Lo! are we not returning to the 'How Not To Die' vlog about "Everything Zombie Movies Get Wrong About Survival"?  Yes we are.  The following heading is one they associate with the walking dead, but, as above, it applies to all post-apocalypse scenarios.  Art!

I may have cheated a tad in not using a scenario where there are alien scavengers, too.  Work with me on this one.

     HTND over-egg the pudding on this one, claiming that in countless zombie films and television series, the protagonists blithely allow an armed stranger into their camp, failing to take any precautions, whilst they treat a single rotting zombie on the horizon as WE ARE ALL DOOMED DOOMED DOOMED I TELL YOU AND DID YOU BOLT THE STABLE GATE PROPERLY BUT WE'RE STILL DOOMED EVEN IF YOU DID.  

     Art!

     Conrad unsure what symbolism the birds have.  'The muskels of Petrovy' perhaps?

     ANYWAY ANYWAY their allusion is to human survivors being all too trusting of other human survivors, leading to treachery, malfeasance and the failure to return library books on time, which is universally recognised as the single greatest factor in retarding human civilisation.  Art!

     THEY FINALLY QUOTE SOURCES!  FINALLY! O I'm so hap-hap-happy.  Yes, their example is from the 2010 Haitian earthquake disaster, where the breakdown of civil society led to armed robbery, turf warfare and gangs ambushing supply convoys.  If there had been any port, it would doubtlessly have been passed to the right.

       Then, to underline human differentiation, they also explain that the aftermath of the Japanese earthquake disaster in 2011 saw NO increase in violent crime or a shortage of library books returned on time.  Nippon communities pulled together to look under other books and papers to seriously locate those overdue books, and also avoid becoming anarchic barbarians.  Art!

     But not Fukuyama!

     As per HTND, the sheer unpredictability of humans makes for woefully unpredictable reactions in any societal collapse, with the majority trending more towards the Haitian model than the Japanese.  I beleive this is why one author claimed that the Sinister Union would survive an apocalypse better than South Canada, because the Sinister's general civil population were not armed to the teeth and thus unable to wipe themselves out.

     HTND also mentions that BACK ON TOPIC! a zombie is only dangerous when it gets to within biting distance, but a human with a scoped rifle is an issue out to several hundred PROUD IMPERIAL YARDS.  Yes, well, if you're going to add in countervailing factors, does the human in question have a proper tactical vest load-out?  Art!

     Ngr4odf7fo*rssrrrrrrrr SO MANY BARE FOREARMS.

     ANYWAY AGAIN ANYWAY they asset that hostile humans will eventually become a bigger problem than zombies, as the walking dead rot apart and disintegrate whilst the Port Au Prince militia remain standing.  Fair enough.

     Time to move onto other, differently-wholesome things.

Do You Want Skynet?

BECAUSE THIS IS HOW YOU GET SKYNET!  And, lest ye be unaware of what that means, let me refresh your memory.  Art!

     Global thermonuclear armageddon is what.  Bit of a buzzkill, nicht wahr?  

     Why do I bring this up right now?  O I thought you'd never ask.  Art!

    That, ladies, gentlemen and those unsure, is Evan Hubinger of Anthropic, a chap whose job description includes 'AI' and 'safety' and if he looks tense or jittery then it's time to pay attention to him.  He is the latest in a long series of talking heads who have warned about the dangers of AI.  In this instance he doesn't provide a model for how all of you - I mean we - get wiped out, merely that his fear is of AI developing itself, yes, working on itself to get better and better, and finding Hom. Sap. rather a nuisance, and then ending us.  

     Evan qualifies this by rating the possibility or probability as low - BUT NOT ZERO.  

     What is even more chilling is that the news article quoting Evan also got an insight from Dame Wendy Hall, whom I had never heard of.  Her job description involves 'AI' and 'advising the UN'.  That is an indication of how potentially devastating a rogue AI could be.  Art!

     O NO IT'S NOT!

     Be careful.

A Little Gentle Shoeing Again

Here's a terrible photo of Donold Judas Trump for you.  It's not hard to find awful photos of King Piggy as he looks to be rotting from the inside out, as well as putting on - Art!

     I dunno - shoe polish instead of hair dye?  A lesson in how to look 90, perhaps.  Or, the perils of getting ready in the dark.  Whichever or whatever, not a good look.  Nor is this - Art!

     What you see here are the empty upper and middle tiers of seating at the convention centre that the Wizard Lizard Gizzard party are using to host a - you may be ahead of me here - convention in Dallas.  Donold is the star turn, making the event all about him, which is why the venue is only two-thirds full, and why the promoters were desperately pimping free tickets to anyone with a pulse and even partial mobility.  Donnie Dorko claimed that all the empty seats are because folks went to the bathroom, and then that he was going to give everyone $5,000 if his party did well at the elections.  If, very much against the run of play, they do well, he will deny ever having said it, call it fake news and then run away to cheat at golf.

     I may come back to this, Chris Cilliza did an excellent breakdown of the event and what it's supposed to promote.

Hold That Thought

Look what I found on the hell-platform Twitter.  If this gains traction I want royalties.  Art!

Bring On The Brucie!

Pennington, that is, from the channel 'Sci-Fi Art', which promotes art in sci-fi, you may be surprised to hear.  I keep bringing up their name to ensure they don't sue me for plagiarism, aren't I a caution.  Art!

     Conrad is pretty certain this one is a Brian Aldiss cover picture, I shall check in a minute.  Note that the old gent featured on the cover is exhibiting sub-optimal survival behaviour; the correct response to a smouldering volcano is to move away from, not towards it.  He's a bit close to the not-very-hale edge of that outcrop, too.  Nor are those birds.  Conrad isn't sure what they are, except once again Ol' Brucie has flying objects tailing back to the horizon.  Let me dig a little.   Aha - Art!

     Told you so.

Wildfireberries

Forgive Me For Being Tasteless

Genuinely, Conrad's palette is almost non-existent thanks to his broken nose and lack of a sense of smell, which is definitely Too Much Information, even if it helps explain his insanely loud snoring.  

     Where were we?  O yes, 'The Andromeda Strain' in it's Seventies iteration, where 'Wildfire' is the codename for a Bottom Secret facility constructed deep underground, with the task of combatting deadly pathogens.  Art!

     It's an excellent sci-fi thriller, and the Casting Director deserves kudos as well, because the scientific team assembled to combat 'Andromeda' actually LOOK like scientists, rather than clothing models.

     Of course - obviously! - that has nothing to do with what this Intro is really about, which is a second helping of 'Preston Stewart's economic analysis of Ruffian trends and indicators.  Look away if you're an FSB officer scanning these pages for background information, it's not going to end well, dude.  Art!

     Aptly enough for Mordorvia, here we see a Wildberries warehouse complex doing an impression of Mount Doom and erupting in an inverted mountain of smoke and fire.  Ol' Prez adds in the detail that burning down Ozon and Wildberries has inflicted $12 billion worth of damage.  The Battle Damage Assessment comes from a Ruffian company, Data Insights, not a South Canadian or Ukrainian source.  So - they may be downplaying it?  Ooo-err Matron!

     Prez echoes a comment that 'Jake Broe' also made, as to whether such targets are legitimate, or whether others ought to be sought.  At the end of the day, that's still $12 billion of damage inflicted, and as per Jake himself, around 180,000 orcs are now unemployed, whom are not paying taxes into the economy.  Prez adds in an excellent proviso, about second and third order effects, which is to say things nobody can see or predict unless they have a TARDIS.  Art!

     That's 'Flavour Trip' broadcasting from their Catering Caravan Cum Dance Studio, which is a whole lot more appealing than a load of burned Ruffian plastic plates.

     ANYWAY back with Prez and his economic data.  Art!

     Wonder Wifey will like this one.  It shows how the Ruffian export of wheat has been absolutely hammered in August, down to a fraction of what it used to be pre-war.  The lowest levels in 15 years, which also means the lowest revenue in that time, too; from 5 million tons to 2.2 million, rather ironically mirroring their oil revenue decline.  Lest ye be unaware, this is not good.  Not good at all.  Art!

     I just wanted to juxtapose Prez's happy smiling face with one of the most potentially destabilising Kozaky measures versus Mordorvia so far.  The graph illustrates closures of Ruffian airports across time, with Prez casting doubt on the '993' for August 2026, suspecting it to be more likely for the whole of 2026 - this is a man who treats sources with scepticism, as we all ought to.  Noble Prez!  Worthy Prez!

     ANYWAY AGAIN allow me to bring in 'Caolan Robertson', the journo who now lives in Ukraine, and who posted a very, very relevant vlog.  Art!

     Prez Zed - that is, the small hirsute dude with the most enormous shoulders in history - warned international airlines and the administrative organisations behind them that venturing into Ruffian airspace was, from this day onward, a verrrry bad idea.  As Caolan - Art!

     He's already taken, ladies! (and bats for the opposition anyway).  Besides which, look at the background.  This is a Ukrainian airport, which has been closed down for over 4 years, the reason Caolan is making his report from that very spot.  Putinpot revealed how verrrry seriously he takes Prez Zed's threat by coming back with a response in a couple of hours, and this from a man who will happily wait weeks if not months to respond to an irksome topic.

     Why is this a problem?  O I thought you'd never ask - Art!

     If you remember this, then you remember that Putinpot grovelled publicly to the Prez of Azerbaijan in apology about the mass murder, and the Azeris are not fond of Ruffians to this day.  If outside airlines keep flying into Ruffia, whilst there are drone attacks underway from Ukraine, there will be more shootdowns such as above.  Guaranteed; the orcs would rather shoot down 10 civilian airliners than risk a single Kozaky drone gets through. If the Ruffian SAM system 'gates' are widened to include objects as small as drones, then everything else bigger than a football will trigger alerts; flocks of birds, swarms of insects, leaves, mist, smoke, fog, ground clutter, floating rubbish.  Good luck with a system that has a 90% false identification status.

     Then you have the cost of shutting down an airport.  Barad-Duh has 3.  From what I remember, closing a single airport for a single day costs $12 million, so that's $36 million for a single day in Moscow.  Extrapolate that to the whole of Ruffia for, say five days, and - you're talking $billions.  No wonder the Puffy-Phaced Petrol Pimp looks stressed!  Art?

APPLY TARGET HERE

     I think we can pause there as Putinpot's houses of ware burn down around him*.

Bring On The Brucie

As in the artist Bruce Pennington, not Anthea Redfern's husband you pfloob!  Tut tut what people think of you.  Art!

    Hurrah nothing to do with Nostrildamus!  In fact this one gives me H P Lovecraft or one of his contemporaries <code for 'I cannot remember their name  Mister Hand reveals the hideous truth> vibes.  David Someone.  Let me see if I can dig out anything further.  

     GOTCHA!  Art?

     Well, I got the triple-lobed name right, and Ol' Lovvy gives them a big fat quote in the bottom, and it's a good forty years since I read this stuff, so I shall take that as a win.  Given all the detail to port on the original, I can only hope they printed it on the back of the paperback.  As I observed a good fifty years ago, whether a purchaser picks up a sci-fi novel or not depends in large part on the cover illo.

Hurrying Up The Hype

Moving on only slightly from cover pictures, we have the latest on that list of '20 Alleged Classics That Are Still Unnecessarily Bothering Modern Audiences' and are now into the following.  Art!

     I think the original is 'A La Temps Purdue' or some such, which translates as 'Stolen Time', or 'In search of time that has been stolen', which is to do with cakes called 'madeleines' and O look - Art!

     I remember Janice making these in the office and they were delicious.  Her background is Cameroonian and Dutch so not sure what we're taking away from that.

Ah Yes One Of My Favourites

Conrad  has a suite of tanks from the Second Unpleasantness that he likes despite reality, memory and what comes between, especially if they're from This Sceptred Isle.  Art!

 

     The  Cromwell, named after the High Executioner himself.

     0 and it came into service a good 12 months after it ought to have been on the battlefield.  

* It's a metaphor but if it really happened nobody would cry