"Endurance Is Not A Success"

I Know What You're Thinking

If your expeditionary sailing ship is trapped in pack ice in the Antarctic, suffers a hull rupture so serious that it has to be abandoned and later sinks, then you can say that's not a success.  Art!

Ice = 1 Ship = 0

     Behold the 'Endurance', said ship and the wooden steed of Sir Ernest Shackleton for his 1914 - 1915 exploratory venture to Antarctica.  No, it isn't supposed to look like that; this is what happens when the pack ice closes in on the hull, prefatory to crushing it.  You may be relieved to know that the expedition members survived, which is a tale in itself.

     ANYWAY Perfidious Albion's Senior Service decided they liked the name 'Endurance' and named an icebreaker 'HMS Endurance' in 1967.  Art!

      ALMIGHTY SNIVELLING GARGANTUAN DOG BUNS!

     Sorry.  Currently listening to my i-pod and the Snow Patrol track 'The Symphony' is playing, from the album 'Fallen Empires' and it's fifteen years old.

     BACK TO ENDURANCE, HMS, PENNANT NUMBER A171.  She left service in 1991, meaning that yes, she was inducted into the Falklands Task Force, acting as a patrol and helicopter platform, landing Royal Marine parties and helping disable the Argentine submarine. 'Santa Fe'.

     So, pretty successful, I'm sure you'd agree.  So, where does today's title come from?  O I thought you'd never ask!

     From the last part of Pyotr Kurzin's detailed look back at the four-year involvement of Mordorvia in his 'Global Gambit' vlog.  Art!

Marque and maker

     Bear in mind that Pyotr isn't some knee-jerk anti-Ruffian, he has sources and contacts behind the Tin Curtain, and within the Ruffian expatriate community.

     This is where Putinpot's calculus about how much suffering his serfs can take comes into play, because Ol' Pyot acidly observes 'Endurance is not success'; rather it is the opposite, persistence disguising failure and hoping a miracle arrives.  For 2026, the feeling for Ruffians is that of cumulative strain over time, where the probability of a storming battlefield victory has diminished to near-zero.  All they have to look forward to are more privations as Mordorvia transitions into North Korea 2.0  Art!

     This is the orcs last significant victory, and a Pyrrhic one at that: the ruins of Avdiivka, a sea of rubble that cost 40,000 orcs to take - in February 2024.  This advanced their front lines without any deeper advantage gained.  They still haven't taken Pokrovsk, either, a minor Donbas town of no great strategic significance.  But Peter The Average has been told it was already captured, so an ocean of blood is going to be spilled trying to turn fiction into fact.  Once again, endurance is not success.  See also Kupiansk.

     Nobody foresaw this four years ago when the Special Idiotic Operation began.  Kyiv was supposed to be swiftly defeated and renamed Kiev, leading to the downfall of all Ukraine, medals all round, Putinpot crowned Eternal Tsar, etcetera.

     Except not.  Art!

     Remember when the 'Moskva' was sunk?  I do, because the BBC had drawn up a list of possible 'provocations' that Ukraine might commit, causing Putinpot to resort to tactical nuclear weapons, and sinking the Moskva was one of them.  In fact he dared not, as Xi had sternly warned him that any such action would result in a hostile China, meaning the end of the Ruffian war effort in a couple of weeks.  Art!

     This is 'Operation Spiderweb', with Ruffians proving that tyres placed on strategic bombers do not protect against FPV drone attacks.  One-third of Mordorvia's long-range bomber force went up in smoke.  Art!

     The naval port of Sevastopol, one of the reasons the orcs invaded Crimea in 2014, the crown jewel of Ruffian occupation -

     Which they have now abandoned.  It is much too vulnerable to Ukrainian drone and missile strikes, so they have taken to hiding what's left of the Black Sea Fleet in the Sea of Azov or Novorossiysk.  The latter of which is proving to be just as vulnerable to drone attacks as Sevastopol: the Ukrainians hit the port, facilities, ships and oil infrastructure yesteryon with TWO HUNDRED drones.  They hit Engels air base with at least 70 drones at the same time.  Art!

Novorossiysk stages live re-enactment of Deep Purple album 'Burn'

     Here, as Pyotr puts it, is an example in action of a small country or power adapting much quicker than a larger one, where technology is activated to neutralise mass and expedite manpower.  Art!

The killer lawnmower is here to stay

     A further example would be the Ukrainians use of decentralized 3D-printing technology to mass-produce drone components, meaning they can now use up to eight thousand FPV drones daily.  Actually that was the figure for 2025, they may be aiming at 12,000 per diem for 2026.  In terms of innovation and adaptability, they are running circles around the much larger but much clumsier and far less efficient Mordorvia.  Art!

Soon to come - AI*

     There has been a new twist on what you might call an 'Innovation Cycle' paradigm in recent days, thanks to the war waged by South Canada and Israel on Iran.  The Iranians, who seem to have the military mentality of a headless chicken - endless decapitation strikes will do this - are launching dozens of their Shahed drones at any country they don't like, whom are now trying to intercept $50,000 drones with $4 million Patriot missiles.  After watching the war in Ukraine for 4 years the Saggy Senile Sepia Sackbut is forced to admit they cannot intercept all these drones.  One imagines a South Canadian anti-drone interceptor system would take 5 years to reach the production stage, after costing $25 billion and only be able to produce 10 interceptors per month, unit cost $500,000.

     Or - they could outsource it to Ukraine.  What was that about cards?

Unit cost $4,000, or 1,000 instead of a single Patriot

Note that nobody's asking the Ruffians about advice or help.  Their given tactic is to intercept drones with oil refineries.

Yay, Volunteer Firefighter Fundraising!

In many rural communities, located a long way from nearby towns and cities, there exists a volunteer firefighting team who will go into action within minutes of an emergency being declared, rather than citizens having to wait thirty minutes or an hour for the full-time chaps to arrive.  Art!

     These chaps and chapesses deserve all the plaudits they can be given, putting their lives on the line voluntarily, and communities repay the favour by raising funds for them, as with this tale, where a beauty pageant for young girls was underway, categories of 1-4 and 5 or 6.  The elder kids had already done their catwalk as 300 mothers, grandmothers and any fathers or brothers unable find a good enough excuse were in attendance inside a marquee.  Art!

     What can possibly go wrong, you ask?  

     Read on and you'll see.

     A 3-year old was supposed to cross the stage from left to right, then walk back again, except she stopped at the centrally-placed flower arrangement to sniff at them, which unscripted act evoked a lot of  'Awwww!' from most of the onlookers.

     Not all.  One grandmother, rather too invested in her own child's performance, yelled at the 3-year old for trying to hog the limelight and attention and they ought to get off the stage.  She then stormed onto the stage, grabbed the child and tried to drag her away.

     This is generally an unwise move to execute in front of a child's mother.  Mom also stormed the stage, dragged Grandkaren back by the hair and pulled her around, face-to-face.  GK, totally amazed that anyone would dare intercept her and interrupt her child abuse, lets go.  

     Mom hauls back and delivers two right hooks to GK's face.  Art!

     The firefighters intervened to break it up.  Grandkaren insists on calling the cops because she's been assaulted and her pride is hurt.  Probably her jaw, too.  When the officers arrive she insists on pressing charges, despite repeatedly being warned by said officers tone and demeanour that this is a big mistake.  She screeches confirmation.

     What could possibly go wrong, you ask?

     She's arrested and charged with child kidnap is what.

     GK, now realising that a sewer's worth of ordure has hit the fan, tries to backtrack, to no avail; she had her chance to de-escalate and refused it.

     What could possibly go wrong, you ask?

     GK stays true to her ways and attacks the cop, and is then Tazered.  Art!

     She got charged in court, put on 2 years probation and given 1,000 hours community service.

     Mom The Masher got all charges dropped as she was acting in self defence and was baked a cake by her appreciative neighbours.

Get Thee Behind Me, Clickbait!

Art!

      'Falling Skies' again, hmmmm?  Conrad feels the universe is trying to tell him something.  Try using Twitter instead, who don't you?

      Thank heavens for my armoured underwear that balks the teeth and talons of the Coincidence Hydra.

How Will You Tell?

Art!

     Crazy enough to put boots on the ground, mayhap?

     And on that wonderful note I leave you.  Chin chin!

*  DO YOU WANT SKYNET?  BECAUSE THIS IS HOW YOU GET SKYNET!1]]]

The Metrics And Murrains Of Misery

In Mordorvia

For Lo! we are back with another Intro looking at Pyotr Kurzin's 'Global Gambit' vlog about the four years plus of the Puff-Phaced Petrol Pimp's Special Idiotic Operation.  With added comments from Conrad, as I cannot resist and don't want to merely lift the whole thing and risk copyright issues.  Art!

     Yes, very kaiju and of course - obviously! - nothing whatsoever to do with this Intro.  Once again, whose blog is it?

     SO Pyotr phrased this part of his analysis as 'War As A Psychological Strategy' since Putinpot thinks, hopes, believes and prays that Ukraine will collapse either militarily or economically first, rather than Mordorvia.  However, as all the NAFO members keep pointing out, we are now in Year Five of the 'Three Day SIO' and Ukraine hasn't crumbled, despite suffering their worst winter so far.  Art!

Imagine this with no power, light or running water

     The political pressure that the Trump administration has brought to bear on Kyiv has also proved ineffectual, as Ukrainian dependency on South Canadian munitions is a fraction of what it was originally; this is for two reasons, one being the EU stepping up and in, and the other being home-grown ordnance filling any gaps.  

     Then again, if - and it's an 'if' rendered in neon letters ten feet tall - yes go ahead Art -

    -  Putinpot did accept a ceasefire AND peace deal, Ruffia's wartime economy would implode into a recession as their military-industrial complex abruptly stopped working.  Not only that, there would be 700,000 ex-soldiers back on the streets of Ruffian cities, towns and villages, armed with illegally-held weapons, off their head on drugs and suffering from PTSD.  Putinpot doesn't want this to happen, but he cannot also afford to keep the SIO going.  Damned if he does, damned if he doesn't.

     Come peace, and assuming all the twitchy armed junkies are sent to Siberia - Stalin did this with those injured in the Great Patriotic War so as to not jar the delicate sensibilities of his serf population - Putinpot's own orcs will start to ask questions about the SIO.  Why were losses so incredibly high?  Why is the economy in the toilet?  Why are we now a trade colony of China?  Art!

Shortly to be owned by Xi

     Here an aside.  Do NOT mistake China for an ally of Ruffia.  They merely have a common enemy, that being South Canada, and China is quite happy to gouge Mordorvia as much as possible for as long as possible.  Let me explicate a little further -

China has raised prices of fiber optic cables, which are critical for drone control, by 2.5-4 times for Russian buyers, according to Russian media. At the beginning of 2025, G.652D fiber, used in telecommunications cables, cost 16 yuan ($2.33) per kilometer in China, and in January 2026, it already cost 40 yuan ($5.80) per km.

      From 'Anton Gerashchenko' on Twitter.  The Ruffians, you see, don't have any capacity to produce fibre optic cable themselves, since their single plant producing it was blown up a year ago.

     ANYWAY AGAIN Putinpot cannot escalate the war or end it, so he is now trying to reframe it as a war for the very survival of Ruffia (and himself), once again making the calculus that his orc serfs will put up with an infinite amount of suffering because they have to.  That will work until it doesn't, since the war is not winding down or petering out but getting more bloody by the month.  Art!

Courtesy the very excellent Clement Molin

     Here are the metrics I mentioned.  O - 'murrain' is an obsolete word used to describe any plaguey disease.  The area that Putinpot wants most of all, the Donbas, is where Ruffia has managed to advance 60 kilometres in 4 years.  This isn't very impressive when you realise this leaves 1,254 kilometres to the western border of Ukraine, and averages at just over 41 metres per day.  Or, for our South Canadian readers, the distance from Washington to Baltimore in a 40 minute train journey.  The yellow lines above are Ukrainian defence lines that have been conquered, the blue lines are the ones remaining that the orcs need to conquer before they get another 10 kilometres further.  Art!

     Apropos the above, Mordorvia cannot now generate enough combat power to break Ukrainian lines, because any concentration of troops is instantly spotted by drones and then attacked.  Minor tactical gains - again see the 41 metres daily average above - do not translate to operational, let alone strategic advantages.  Plus, the supply of stupid, greedy or stupid and greedy orcs is drying up, with significant shortfalls in recruitment in December and January - no figures released for February yet.  The orcs that do turn up for service are of low quality with poor to non-existent morale, and there is a profound '500' problem, i.e. desertion, in the ranks affecting possibly 70,000 troops.  Art!

     Cities like Saint Petersburg can afford to pay enormous sign-up bonuses, to the order of ₽4 million ($52,000) for specialist roles, whilst a lot of the provinces are bankrupt and can't pay any sign-up bonus, in which case nobody signs up.  Where the bonus is paid, it averages ₽2.5 million ($30,000) which significantly affects the Ruffian military budget.  Regions paying this kind of bonus need to bring in 1,000 volunteers to cover monthly losses, which equals $360 million per annum.  Over a third of a billion dollars just in sign-up bonuses.

     This plan that everything's going accordingly to must be some kind of special.

Further To King Piggy's Scrofulitic Neck

David Pakman, whom I follow on Youtube, and who has an open loathing of Fat Caligula, put up an hilarious quiz on Youtube yesteryon, which I will copy here.  Art!

     'Ignore it and maybe it will go away' seems to be the official line.

March Is Bearing Up Well

Today being the command to go forward, as in 'March Forth', a pun you can only make one one day of the year and I'm currently typing this out on March 4th, so there.  Art!

     Bright, sunny, not too windy nor chilly.  Also, you can't see the grubby state of my Sekrit Layr's window against the azure sky.  Weather like this is a double-edged sword as yes, taking Edna for trotties is considerably less burdensome than in an overcast with rain, yet the world and his wife will be walking their woofers, too.

Too Much Of Bad Thing?

I came across a quote this morning from John Bolton, the South Canadian UN Ambassador and ex-Defence Secretary under Donnie Dorko, which was quite stinging.  Ol' John was getting a bit of his own back on DJ Tango, whom insulted him after he left office.  Art!

     I cannot believe it takes 25 minutes to give him the look of someone who has just dabbed their face in a trough of gravy.  The hair I can believe, it ends up looking like a motorcycle helmet made of fur.  One reason he never takes his MAGA cap off when cheating at golf.

You What?

Once again my news feed throws up strange items that are cursed by the sub-editor not being able to speak or write grammatically.  Art!

     Do they mean 'largest maker of Belleville Springs'?  Is this how one abbreviates 'Manufacturing'?  What is a 'Belleville Disc Spring' anyway?

     Ah.

A Belleville disc spring (or washer) is a conical-shaped, frusto-conical washer designed to act as a spring, bearing high axial loads with minimal deflection in confined spaces.

Art!

     No I'm not going to explain what 'Frusto-conical' is.  Go do your own research.

If I Were To Say

"Meat Grinder"

Then we all know where your thoughts would flit, and normally you'd be correct, unless you were thinking of 'Prime Cut', where the hapless Murphy, sent down from Chicago to Kansas to collect a debt owed, ends up in the livestock processing line.  Art!

     There you go, Mister Murphy's Meaty Mealtime snorkers, which is how he got posted back to Chicago.  By refrigerated freight, one hopes.  I compressed the meat processing part as it goes on for several minutes and you might not wish to be converted to vegetarianism thusly.

     ANYWAY I have recently finished 'Meat Grinder' by Pritt Buttar, which, if Art will do the honours -

     Pritt's work is focussed on the Teuton defence of this salient, and the Sinister efforts to overwhelm it, with the former suffering 670,000 casualties and the latter up to 2.3 million, which is where the appellation 'Rzhev Meat Grinder' comes from.  I don't propose to detail the whole book, as it's 483 pages long, but I did make a note - actually folding page edges (the horror!  The horror!) - of three separate topics.

     One thing that the Sinisters did badly was logistics*, an observation Pritt tartly notes goes back to before the Red Army even existed.  When the regime was under the tsars, Ruffian generals ' - behaved as if logistics were an irrelevance'.  Supplies and supply chains were expected to magically appear and sustain the army without any planning or preparation.  Art!

     He points out the organised chaos that enveloped the Ruffian army in 1914 when it mobilised, which ought to have been done by rail and organised in detailed timetables by companies of railway troops.  In reality the army was mobilised first, before the railway staff were assembled, leading to units having to march across Ruffia to reach forming-up areas.  In fact this is mentioned in Solzhenitsyn's '1914' when an officer proudly boasts that the Teutons need railways to mobilize but Ruffians will happily walk to Berlin.

     The Sinister efforts against the Rzhev salient were constantly harassed by the dismal road and skeleton rail net in their rear, with the former becoming almost unusable in bad weather - the 'rasputitsa' that came in spring and autumn - that were as predictable as clockwork yet utterly ignored.  Existing roads were not improved, nor were new ones laid, not even 'corduroy' ones.  Art!

Teutons building a corduroy road

     Traffic control was also abysmal on the Sinister side*, with huge traffic clots forming along the insufficient roads, preventing organised advances or attacks and allowing the Teutons to shift their scanty reserves to threatened areas and defeat attacks in detail.  Equipment such as bulldozers to clear snow and level roads was unknown to the Sinisters and needed to wait for Lend Lease to supply them.  Art!

     There were also fliers printed by the Sinisters for onward delivery to the Teutons, which now read as tragically ironic.  The text was supposedly sent as a reply by the Zaporizhzhia Cossacks to the Turkish Sultan in the War of 1672, whom told them to submit to his will and rule*.  

"You are the Turkish Sultan, brother and comrade of the damned devil, and assistant to Lucifer himself!  What sort of knight are you, when you can't kill a hedgehog with your bare behind?  Your damned face is a mess.  You son of a dog, you will not have the sons of Christians under your rule, we are not afraid of your troops and will fight you with earth and water, we will destroy your mother.

    You are a Babyonian cook, a Macedonian charioteer, a Jerusalem  brewer, an Alexandrian goatherd, a pig herder of Egypt, an Armenian thief, a Tatar bandit .....you pork-faced mare's anus.

     That is how the Cossacks answer you, ragged one."

     Allow me to put up a close up of the painting above.  Art!

     

     You can see where the Ruffian insult 'Khokhol', 'crest' or 'tufty' comes from, that being the de rigeur hairstyle of a proper Cossack.

     ANYWAY AGAIN one has to wonder what on earth the baffled Teutons made of these propaganda leaflets.  Toilet paper, probably.
     

     Now, one thing to bear in mind about 'Meat Grinder' is that it was published in 2022, and thus written up as an MSS in 2021.  Pritt includes a rather eyebrow raising speech by Putinpot in 2020, when a memorial to the Rzhev Salient warriors was raised.  

"Participants had written just a few scarce words.  It was too difficult to remember that terrible Rzhev Meat Grinder, as it is sometimes called.  Fierce, exhausting, bitter fighting continued in this area for months.  Soldiers fought for every single grove, hill, every square metre of land.

      It is impossible to think of the Red Army's losses in those battles without pain.  More than 1.3 million people were killed, injured or recorded as missing."

     Getting close to that total yourself, Peter The Average.  Art!

Bear With Me On This One

Back in the good old days of the Cold War, there was a branch of intelligence and media speculation dubbed 'Kremlinology', where observers in the West sought to understand what was going on within the Sinister Union.  They didn't have much to go on, as Churchill once observed that Kremlin politics resembled two bulldogs fighting underneath a rug; all you saw was the end result.  Art!

     They pored over pictures like this.  Who was present?  Who was absent?  Who was centre stage?  What were they wearing?  Who was on the periphery? and so on.  

     With that in mind, I have another dubious photograph of the Boorish Orange Oaf Himself.  Art!

     King Piggy might not be aware of this scrofula, as otherwise he'd hike up his collar or slather makeup on it.  The White House has claimed the purplish blemish is caused by 'skin cream', which one would expect to, you know, reduce bruising/strangling/bubonic plague symptoms, not increase them.

     Doubtless there are thousands of people opining on social media about what this is and how it was caused.  An overdose of golf?

Interesting Backstory

Conrad occasionally watches 'Brandon Herrera's Youtube channel, which I cannot recommend as he swears a lot, and has dubious political views, but he's amusing when he sticks to guns.  Of which he has an awful lot.  He came up with a short video about - Art!

     This is the 'Zip 22', named after the calibre of bullet it fires, the .22 Long Rifle round, which is one of the smallest and least effective rounds out there.  The maker, USFA, had previously made high-quality replicas of South Canadian Civil Unpleasantness revolvers.

     Then they made this item.  Art!

     Brandon simply could not manage to hold this weapon comfortably, as the stupid dual-trigger arrangement gets in the way.  To cock the gun, that is, to put a round from the magazine into the breech, you have to PUT YOUR HAND IN FRONT OF THE MUZZLE and press the cocking piston.  The ammunition does not feed properly and frequently jams; on one occasion Brandon had to remove a round that had somehow loaded back to front.  Everything bar the firing pin, spring and barrel is made of polymer, so if it gets hot, it will melt or fracture.

     Not only that, USFA sold all their production plant for making replica pistols in order to tool up to make the Zip.

     The persuasive rumour is that president and business owner, Douglas Donnelly, was about to be taken to the cleaners in a bitter divorce battle.  So he deliberately sabotaged the business, which closed in 2017.  I cannot find anything to confirm this but you must admit it would explain a lot.  Art!

When they made proper guns

Get Thee Behind Me, Click-Bait!

It's only allowed if I'M doing the click-baiting and I don't care how much of a double-standard this is, because once again whose blog is it?  Art!

     Going by the description and Noah Wyle, this is 'Falling Skies', which Conrad watched for the first season when it was originally broadcast.  It was around for five seasons so it did something right.  Perhaps time to take it up again?

Finally -

Bring it on down Ambrose!

"Cynic, n: A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.  Hence the custom amongst the Scythians** of plucking out a cynic's eyes to improve his vision."

*  Also a contemporary problem.

**  Proto-Ruffians

Retro In The Metro

Don't Judge Me

Yes, the 'Metro' newspaper - allegedly - makes medium quality cat-litter tray liner and Conrad used to pick it up on the bus purely for the Cryptic Crossword when I was traversing the urban dellscapes into Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell.  Art!

     Dog Buns, Conrad was kind of aware about Gene passing, but didn't want it confirmed so brutally.  I like to remember him as the worldly, cynical yet idealistic sheriff in 'Mississippi Burning' and the frantic escapee wearing drag in 'The Birdcage', to say nothing of Popeye Doyle.

     ANYWAY we are here to look back in both anger and umbrage at Pyotr Kurzin's retrospective on the war in Ukraine, having done a brief overview yesteryon of his analysis via the 'Global Gambit'.  Go check it out.  And no, that is not a suggestion.

     SO.  PK took a look at where the Special Military Operation has ended up, in terms of technology and innovation, after 4 years.  Art!

     Those are not the webs of Ukrainian spiders as big as dustbin lids - although yesteryon I did see a video clip of some evil swine who attached a spider puppet just that size to his pet dog and let it ramble across the neighbourhood - rather they are the latest iteration of drones, using fibre-optic cable to guide onto target, because they are immune to electronic warfare.   Art!

Courtesy Clement Molin, excellent Twitter poster

     What you're looking at now is the newly-christened 'Grey Zone', which way back in the First Unpleasantness was known as 'No Man's Land', where neither side holds sway, yet which is contested to seek to overturn this status quo.

     PK doesn't mention it, because the info is ages old, but waaaaay back at the start of the Special Idiotic Operation, Ukraine used Bayraktar drones to devastating effect.  They helped to paralyse and decimate Ruffian vehicle columns invading Ukraine, and were used in what became the siege of Snake Island.  Then the orcs developed the EW chops to put them on the fritz and they left the battlefield.  Art!

     Which is why fibre-optic drones are now de rigeur for both sides.  Well, kind of.  Again, because news moves faster than Youtube updates, PK was unaware that China, which supplies Mordorvia with fibre-optic cables, has just upped the price from between 2.5 to 4 times the original cost, and Putin will just have to grin and bare it.  Or bear it.  You know, Mighty Ruffia and all that.

     ANYWAY AGAIN these fibre-optic FPV drones with a great big spool of cable have a range of up to 50 kilometres, meaning a team sitting 1 kilometre behind the front lines can hit enemy targets 49 kilometres away.  In reality, this has created a 'Grey Zone' up to 30 kilometres deep, where manoeuvre warfare has been supplanted by positional warfare, again very reminiscent of the First Unpleasantness.  This multiplicity of drones threatens supply chains, evacuations, troop rotation and night movement.  Art!

Spot Ukraine

     Ol' Pyotr points out, if it needs pointing, that Ruffia's battlefield performance does not match it's progress on the battlefield, and that Mordorvia is now weaker than at any other time, waging an attritional conflict that is now beginning to impact Ruffian civil society, a consequence that Putinpot has sought to avoid above all else.  PK's contacts inside Ruffia - family, friends and acquaintances thanks to the ancestral tree - confirm that, rather than a systemic collapse, there is a gradual erosion of society, which bears up partly to the 'Endurance' myth generated by the Great Patriotic War. That is, orcs are willing to put up with appalling squalor and suffering, because they might win in the end.

     Or - they might not.  Willing to put up with or win in the end?  Quite.  This is the calculus that Putinpot is trying to resolve.

     LATE-BREAKING NEWS:  Ruffian mil-bloggers are reporting that the 'crests', or 'Khokhols' or 'tufties' - all Ruffian hirsute envy of Ukrainian cossacks - are now using miniature drones less than 5" across with rubber rotor blades, which are utterly silent and cannot be heard until so close that orc is bork.  Art!

     Ol' Pyotr also looked at the previous inviolability of Ruffia, which since the time of the Tsars has prided itself on being able to avoid terrorism that plagued the decadent West.  Except not really.  Since 2022 we have seen increasingly regular drone attacks on Moscow, which shut down air transport and cost tens of millions on every single occasion. There have been car (and scooter) bomb assassinations, not to mention scions of the Putinpot regime simply being shot dead.  On an ironic note, it's entirely possible that not all of these were the Bloodseekers Of Budanov Bringing Bloody Blessings, but rather Ruffians falling out with each other over -

     Money.  You know, the stuff that makes up the sinews of war.  Because being as patriotic as you like will not make up the shortfall in your pension, nor the bankruptcy in your oblast's budget.  Another Kutzinism comes to mind; "Time favours the side willing to suffer the longest".

     Who in Mordorvia is assessing the willingness of the orcs to suffer endemic poverty, squalor and death? because you can push sheep only so far until they shed and become wolves.  See 'Iran' for details.  And possibly Pink Floyd and 'Animals'.

More Of Pumpkinhead

As you should surely know by now, Conrad likes to collect ghastly pictures of Donnie Dorko where he has been pictured out of his corset, hairdo, makeup and flattering lighting, or even with any of the above, just done horribly.  Art!

     As I already put, HIS CHIN IS PREGNANT! and as others have pointed out, there is that hideous scrofulitic outbreak beneath his ear.  You know, the ear that was shot off but grew back again within two days.  I am minded of that 'Starry Trex' episode 'Miri', about the life-prolongation project that goes horribly wrong.  Art!

"He could have been number 48 -"

More Of Mendacious Mechanics

If there's a common theme here, it's that misogynistic mechanics might manipulate male-minus motorists.  As in scammers looking for a free lunch might well target a female motorist, seeing them as woefully ignorant about cars and how they operate. Hmmmm well, include Conrad in that demographic, as I have no idea how cars operate.  God invented mechanics so that I did not have to.  Art!

1876 BHP 2,700 RPM 37 litre PDKNCKR

     It is unwise to try and scam a lady with quick wits, and still less so when they had taken their car in for a full service just a couple of weeks prior, with full knowledge of what had been done.  You see - Art!

     - our narrator had been to their local auto-shop and had a full list of service options carried out, before they went to 'Canadian Tire' as said company was well-known for various rip-off tendencies.  They were only there to get a free oil change, courtesy of that cultural icon, a 'coupon'.

     Well.  The shop contact was full of bad news about how dangerous their car was, that it was too dangerous to drive and need thousands of dollars worth of repairs before it would be safe to leave the shop.

     UNfazed Canadian Legal Expert, hereafter UNCLE, challenged the Canadian Tire rep, stating that they were going to contact the auto-shop that did the initial checks and declare they were suing for fraud, as Canadian Tire had informed that the previ -

     Suddenly the automotive problems vanished and UNCLE went on their merry way, just with an everlasting hatred of Canadian Tire.

O Boy Do You Want A 50,000 Word Monograph On This!

As you should surely know by now, Conrad is a bit of a buff on the war in North Africa during the Second Unpleasantness, especially during the first nine months when it was just Perfidious Albion and the Rather Rubbish Romans before the Teutons put in an appearance.  Art!

     There's a whole lot of information - in fact a whole twenty-seven bookcase library to unpack from that headline, which we may come back to - and I bet you can hardly wait.

     In fact the total was more like 240,000, and they were facing 70,000;

     What can possibly go wrong?

Finally -

From my 'QI Book Of Banter': "When in doubt, have a man come in through the door with a gun in his hand" - Raymond Chandler.