I'm Creating This Blog In A Fit Of Seething Ire

Normally At This Time On Sunday

I log onto work and write out my schedule for the week, except today the IT is being a bottomhole and not allowing me to log on to WFM (Work Force Management), and not even doing a Restart got past it.

     So I've turned the laptop off and am now typing this, fingers crossed I can log back on after a gap of about twenty minutes.  We'll see.  Art!

"Angry old man with steam coming out of his ears" if you must know.  Let's get with the links.

2025

BOOJUM!: Today We Talk Of Swans That Are Black

2024

BOOJUM!: Tragic Magic Pelagic

2023

BOOJUM!: Trial By Tyre

2022

BOOJUM!: Mud, Blood And ICBMs

2021

BOOJUM!: Skating On Very Thin Ice

2020

BOOJUM!: Your Humble Scribe Is ANGRY!

2019

BOOJUM!: A Touch Of Terror

2018

BOOJUM!: Fantastic Free Fireworks Forever

2017

BOOJUM!: Alas, Babylon 5

2016

BOOJUM!: Country For Old M.E.N.

2015

BOOJUM!: Conrad's Night On The Tile

2014

BOOJUM!: Farewell Old Friend

Getting Chipped

Just Not How You Imagined It

I know what you're thinking - how can Conrad possibly manage a whole Intro about implanting microchips into domestic pets?  Well, firstly you'd be surprised at how much I can pad out the thinnest of themes, and secondly this is nothing to do with veterinary care, even if the story does involve an ass.  Art!

This, gentle reader, is a Morbark horizontal tree grinder, which, as any fule kno, is distinctly different from a tub grinder.  I mean, who could possibly confuse the two!  Art?

     That's a tub grinder, just so we're clear.   Morbark themselves state that their equipment is becoming more in demand as state and county legislation bans tree culling by burning forests.  These units are not cheap; second-hand (none of that 'Pre-owned' nonsense here) they can fetch $150,000 and the largest ones, brand new, will set you back $1.3 million.

     Let us start the story proper, a tale taken from the 'Slash Start' Youtube channel, narrated by Machinist And Welder, hereafter MAW.  His stock in trade was repair of industrial machinery, especially mining and logging gear, of which there was a sufficiency in his locale.  MAW desired that people ring him first, to give a description of the problem, and then send in the part to be repaired, not the whole thing.  The events he narrates are from his first year of operations, before his check-in process was established.  

     So - the client, whom we shall dub 'Bottomhole Of Doom', BOD hereafter, sent in a complete horizontal Morbark tree grinder.  Art!

     The grinder arrived on a trailer and was dropped off by Put Upon Driver, hereafter PUD, who then left.  With no prior call WAM had no idea what was wrong with it, until BOD calls him five days later to ask if his tree grinder was fixed yet?

     No, was the short answer.  Not being telepathic WAM had no idea what was wrong with it and wasn't going to take it apart piece by piece to find out.  Art!

     'It needs new teeth on the rotor,' explained BOD.

     THIS IS THE IMPORTANT PART!  WAM, only a year into his business, is still canny enough to e-mail a contract to BOD, who signs and returns it so quickly that it's obvious he didn't bother reading it.

     WAM had to call in his cousin and father to strip down the grinder, meaning it was a big old job to dismantle and remove the rotor.  It gets better.  Or worse, depending on your perspective.  Art!

     The rotor teeth bolted on, but BOD had one of his employees then weld them into place, which meant WAM had to use special 'gouging' sticks to blast away the welds before he could replace the teeth.  Hmmm sounds like a dentist, doesn't he?

     When he called BOD to explain the teeth were all replaced and was about to give the cost, BOD immediately hung up on him.

     Two days later PUD turns up with his trailer, looking to take the grinder away.  

     'No pay, no  play,' explains WAM.  PUD calls BOD.  BOD calls WAM, arguing that he doesn't have to pay and PUD is taking the grinder.  WAM says he certainly is going to pay and he'd signed a contract clearly stating that, if payment isn't received, any equipment not paid for stays on his premises.  PUD argued with BOD on the phone for ages but his boss still refused to pay.  Art!

     PUD left and returned 3 hours later with a passel of police, who went over the contract and flatly stated there was nothing they could do.

     The next day PUD returned once again, stating that WAM should have been paid and can he take the tree grinder pretty please?

     There hadn't been a payment.  By this point PUD is furious with BOD, calls him up and screams at him that he either pays up or he's going to be looking for a new driver.

     BOD pays up.  Finally!  Three days of no tree grinder, at whatever rates BOD charged for tree grinding.  Art!

     Things did not end there.  A month later BOD sent in a badly-worn grinding rotor which needed repairing.  WAM rang him up and told him to send his driver back to return the rotor because he wasn't going to do business with a scammer and abuser.  BOD, entirely predictably, went mental, shouting that WAM was the nearest machinist, and even then was three hours drive from BOD's workplace.  Art!

     When PUD returned he informed WAM that he was going to quit after dropping off the rotor, and that BOD had previously been sued for $270,000 in unpaid workshop bills.  BOD's business filed for bankruptcy in 2018 and he then got a job at the same business as WAM's cousin, making industrial machinery, rather than owning and running it.  How are the mighty fallen!

The Haul

I was getting low on sugar-free sweets, which are essential for me in my day-to-day work, as they lubricate my throat during the non-stop phone calls I take.  Not only that, there were a few Jolly Ranchers in the mix, which had stuck to the cardboard box I was using.  So! I have now replaced cardboard box with a tin.  Art!

     They now reside inside the tin and will sustain me for months.

     I like to keep you informed.  Art!

     I also bought a can of this carbonated swill, mostly because I was curious about the name.  Why name a drink after a river in Italy?

     <digging ensues>

     Aha.  The two co-founders, Naresh Nagracha and Vishram Vekaria, were aware of the Rubicon being a hard boundary, beyond which a Roman general was not permitted to bring his troops.  Reaching somewhat, they decided that their establishment of Rubicon was a leap of faith, hence the name.  Hmmm.

Mordorvia, Meet My Munitions

Only 'my' in metaphor.  In response to the massive orc missile and drone strike on Ukraine, Prez Zed authorised a large-scale drone strike on Barad Duh, their capital city, and in daylight, too, just to rub it in.  Art!

     This is one of the targets, a technology park in the Zelenogorsk district of Moscow.  The orcs are not happy that the war is coming home to them, in a capital supposedly surrounded by SAM systems.  Art!

     The Kozaky have mounted occasional small drone attacks on Moscow, possibly just to prove that it can be done.  The damage caused by them was insignificant compared to the damage that SAM missiles that missed caused, and the same is true here.  Art!

     This may be the residence of the woman at bottom starboard, whom exclaimed that an air defence missile had hit her neighbours.

     News  like this guarantees Bunker Grandad will stay in his pit for at least a week, out of fear and being seen as weak and ineffective.

More Gentle Shoeing

These will continue unless people complain, and if I'm not getting any Comments about them. nobody's complaining, either.  Art!

     Looks like King Piggy was in a hurry and only spent an hour on his Hair Helmet instead of the usual ninety minutes.  Akin to the parting of the Red Sea.  

     Art!

     This is Fat Caligula opening Xi's personal notebook to have a nosey whilst The Populous Dictatorship's leader was absent.  I don't know what he expected, as he can barely read English, let alone Hanzi.  Rubio, at upper starboard, quickly looked away in embarrassment when he realised what his orange oaf was doing.

Finally -

Going out with another Biercism.

"Liar,n: An attorney with a roving profession.  A journalist of any occupation, trade or calling."

By Kriminy!

NO! That Is Not A Typo

You ought to know by now that Conrad is a master of the English language and how it is wroten.  If it says 'Kriminy' that's how it is.  Yes, I am spoofing the exclamation 'By Criminy!' which I had to look up on teh Interwebz, as it's not in my 'Brewer's' - which, by the way, is now held together with packing tape and a new edition is definitely needed - and it turns out to be one of those faux exclamations that avoid actually swearing or taking the name of the Lord in vain.  Like 'Dog Buns!'.

     ANYWAY be warned that the Remote Nuclear Tormentor is simply itching for a workout.  Art!

     This is another Intro that might turn out to be the whole blog as I have no editing skills or ability to predict how prolix I shall be.

     <EDITED TO ADD> yes, this whole blog is a single Intro post, take that as you will.

     So! the core of this particular BOOJUM! will be a vlog from 'Paul Warburg' with additional input from various Tweets, Georgijs from 'Ukraine Matters' and my own musings.  I shall post links at the end.

     Okay, Warby's title for his vlog was 'Crimea Could Fall Quickly' and he established that he began to cover the Ukrainian attacks on 'Krim', as it is know to both Kozaky and Mordorvia, a year ago.  Hence today's title.  His predictions, ridiculed by vatniks and orcs, are now beginning to come true.  Art!

He's taken to recording vlogs indoors

     Three things are contributing to this: The SAM systems located in Krim; Logistics into Krim; On-site storage in Krim.  All of these are being taken off-line and are seriously weakening the orc position in Krim.

     First, a lesson in Krim geography.  Art!

     There are road and rail links into the peninsula in it's north and east, the ones in the north having a very narrow 'neck' across which they run.  If Ukraine mounted a direct attack on Krim, this choke point would be very easy for the orcs to defend and likely be extremely costly for the attackers.  The other option would be an amphibious assault on a defended shoreline - one of the most difficult, complex and dangerous types of military operations.

     HOWEVER - a word you surely knew was coming - these choke points also affect the Ruffian garrison in Krim, because geography is a double-edged sword.  The long M-14 highway from Ruffia that crosses occupied Ukraine north of the Black Sea coastline has now been effectively cut.  Art!

Courtesy Jay In Kyiv

  

     A montage I put together.  The first picture is an Ukrainian 'Hornet' drone crossing the M-14; the second is of a destroyed Ruffian military truck hit by a Hornet; the third is a Ruffian driver saying that there was nothing like this only two weeks prior.  There are clips of Hornet drones loitering around Mariupol, the orc-occupied city that is 150 kilometres from the front line and on the shore of the Black Sea.

     Cutting the M-14 was the goal of the failed Ukrainian counter-offensive in 2023.  They have now managed to achieve this by using Starlink-equipped drones that have been mass-produced and can penetrate the Ruffian Electronic Warfare defences south of the Dnipro.  Art!

Hornet pre-sting

     These are only supposed to have a 50 kilometre range, so they've been upgraded.  They pack up to 10 kilos of explosive and will turn anything not a tank into dogfood.

     On the subject of Krim's SAM defences, the Kozaky have been implacably destroying them across the past year.  In 2026 so far they have destroyed over 100 systems, meaning the orcs either have to replace them, in which case they get destroyed in short order, or suffer gaps in air defence, which is already happening.  The Ukrainian tactic is to hit a static SAM system defending something of worth, destroy it and then send in a flock of drones to finish off whatever was being defended.  

     On the subject of storage in Krim, the Kozaky targeted the Feodosia oil storage depot, destroying 23 out of 29 tanks there, and if 6 have been left alone, it's because they're empty.  Art!

     The place has been flaming well malleted, to use my quaint turn of phrase.  I used to store all the fuel needed across Krim, and now it's gone.  Art!

Courtesy ITDUDE Fella

     I know what you're thinking.  "What about the Kerch Straits Bridge?"  O I thought you'd never ask!  You could write an Intro on this subject alone.  Well, the bridge has seen better days.  Art!

     The incredibly ingenious or horribly treacherous, depending on your viewpoint, truck-bomb attack that Ukraine carried out in 2022 crippled the bridge for 6 months.  The Dutch firm that originally built it wouldn't go near it with a fifteen-foot perch pole, so the orcs had to bodge up repairs themselves.  Consequently, the rail bridge has never resumed full service and the tonnage and frequency of rail transport across it has been severely reduced.  To add insult and invective to injury, the Kozaky further damaged a support pier with an underwater drone, meaning that the orcs avoid sending heavy equipment across it, unless desperate.  Of late, they have been hitting the FSB patrol boats that guard it.  Art!

     Poor chaps.  It used to be that being in the FSB was a cushy rear-echelon job where you could torture, rob and murder with impunity.  Not any longer.

     So, you must be asking, how do the orcs get things like replacement SAM systems into Krim if they avoid the bridge?  O I thought you'd never ask!  Art!

     By using rail and roll-on roll-off ferries such as these three.  From port to starboard they are the: Conro Trader; Avangard; Slavyanin.  They were the logistical support for Krim, transporting supplies from the Ruffian shore to the peninsula, meaning that Ukraine took a keen interest in them.  In 2024 they sunk the Conro Trader and badly damaged the other two ships, which were out of commission for two years.  Both came back into service in early 2026 and Hay Pesto! Ukraine hit and badly damaged them again, so they can expect to be out of service for another two years.

     Are the Ukrainians 'shaping the battlespace' to borrow a hideous buzzphrase, in order to attack the Kerch Bridge?  Only a handful of people know for certain whether the answer is yes or no.  Art!

Prez Zed is one

     Leaving it intact means the orcs have to expend a lot of resources to defend it, as Putinpot's vanity project cannot be allowed to fall victim to naval drones or a swarm of Flamingo cruise missiles.  By sinking or damaging ships that patrol or service the bridge, they maintain the pressure.  Intact, it also functions as an escape route for the orcs in Krim, whom will bolt if Ukraine does gain the upper hand.  It was hilarious to see the orc tourists bolting over the bridge by road and rail after Ukraine hit the nearby Saki airbase.

     Paul also added in a very interesting coda: previous plans for re-taking Krim from the orcs presupposed that the Ukrainians would be carrying out assaults using squishy Hom. Sap. and suffering heavy losses.  That was before they began to mass-produce their Unmanned Ground Vehicles, which have been recently used to great effect, negating the use of human soldiers.  Art!

    Meet Huey, Dewey and Louie, the wave of the future.  Given the pace of drone development, it's possible that these will be used in AI-directed swarms before long.  We are living in the future.  Here's the link to Warby's vlog.

The Situation in Crimea is INSANE Right Now - YouTube

     Georgij pointed out another consequence of Ukraine's mid-range drone capability.  Art!

     In 2024 Putinpot was blathering and boasting about creating a 'sanitary zone' inside the Ukrainian border in order to keep the Kozaky away from Ruffia proper, establishing a buffer zone to a depth of 5 - 10 kilometres.  It was supposed to be along that red line Georgij has helpfully sketched.

     Predictably, the whole thing was a miserable failure.  Art!

     This is as far as they got before hitting Ukrainian defences, perhaps 5 kilometres at the deepest penetration.  Against Kozaky mid-range drones that, as above, can easily travel 150 kilometres.  Death of a grate idea.  The link for 'Ukraine Matters'.

Russia's Offensive Has Already Failed

     That's all, folks!

The Devil Is In The Details

Meaning That You Need To Parse Long Documents Before Spending Money

Especially anything to do with the Trump Crime Family.  There's a lot of commentary flying around at present about the 'Trump Mobile Phone', which looks as gaudy and tasteless as you'd expect anything originating from Don Snoreleone.  Art!

     590,000 of the Maga cult faithful shelled out $100 to pre-order these and waited for delivery.  And waited.  And waited.  Deadlines came and went for over a year, and outside observers pointed and laughed, because in the terms of the pre-order contract which these bafunes signed, they were told 'NO refunds'. 

     Oooops.  As of Wednesday there is a claim on the official Twitter website that they are now being shipped, except Comments have been turned off, implying that the admins are worried about people asking for tracking and delivery data before shelling out the other $399.  

     Nor is that all.  As you ought to know by now, Conrad detests the Devil's Digital Devices and has as little to do with them as possible, so I take this assertion as being gospel truth.  

The phones appears to be a reskinned T-Mobile REVVL 7 Pro 5, an out-of-production 2024 model phone that retails on Amazon for $126.

     It's also made in China, not South Canada.  ALWAYS READ THE SMALL PRINT!  Art?

The naked article bereft of tacky gold plate

     We shall see if they ever turn up.

     ANYWAY that part of the Intro was completely impromptu, as what I intended to begin with was another from 'Be Amazed's Youtube channel item 'Most Expensive Mistakes In All History'.  This one was about the Mars Climate Orbiter, the NASA mission to send a satellite to - you may be ahead of me here - orbit Mars and send back telemetry about the climate, way back in 1999.  Art!

MCO with puny humans for scale

     The spacecraft cost $380 million to construct and launch, and took 10 months to reach Mars, where it promptly burned up in the atmosphere and fell apart.

     Ooops.  BE points out that the budget would, adjusted for 2026, come to $500 million.

     What was the cause of this verrry expensive mistake?  O I thought you'd never ask!  Because the two design teams involved, Jet Propulsion Laboratories, and Lockheed Martin, used different measurement systems.  JPL were using metric Newton-second measurements, and LM were using PROUD IMPERIAL measurements of Pound-seconds.  Neither one realised that they were using two different systems that required conversion.  Art!

End result

     One feels they must have felt Led Zeppelin'd, you know, communication breakdown.

     Which brings us to another sorry tale of manglement and Malicious Compliance.  Art!

     Sorry to be technical.  Here we have a multi-kilovolt phase-3 backup generator, a very, very expensive piece of kit.  Stick a pin in this and we'll come back to it.

     The tale begins when a new management company took over the running of an industry associated with defence in South Canada, where the workforce remained.  They were mostly old-timers who were very experienced yet were thought of more as a workfarce by the new manglement, who were determined to Do Things Right.   Art!

Ignore the writing!  Ignore the writing!

     First, the Standard Operating Procedures were going to be re-written in order to comply with the business's model.  Thus I shall dub them Stupid Obtuse Plonkers.  The narrator of this tale I shall dub Grizzled Experienced Monkeywencher, hereafter GEM.

      SOP brought in technical writers to re-do the manuals concerning running the plant, but they had no experience of the plant and - defence contractor, remember? - they had no security clearance to visit it, as it would take at least nine months to get certification.

     Then came proving the pudding.  A test simulating a power outage and the critical back-up generator response was going to be run in one part of the plant operating with toxic, corrosive and flammable chemicals.  GEM and compatriots were brought in to follow the new SOP SOP.  Art!

     I exaggerate but slightly.  GEM and his fellow building engineers, with over 100 years of experience behind them, warned that the SOP SOP was missing inform-   

     'SOP'S SOPS ARE FINE!  RUN THE TEST!' was the intemperate response.

     The back-up generators made loud, expensive noises, there were electrical arcs that fortunately fried nobody, and Hay Pesto! two giant lumps of inert scrap metal that cost $1 million to replace.

     Ooops.

     SOP believed that, somehow, by telekinesis or black magic, GEM and compatriots had sabotaged the generators, so for the next test each building engineer had a manager looking over their shoulder to see they were following the SOP SOP to the letter.

     They did, to exactly the same result: $1 million dollars-worth of scrap metal.

     Manglement then swallowed their pride and asked/begged/pleaded tearfully <delete where applicable> what went wrong?

     A vital step had been missed in the SOP, a paragraph detailing that both generators had to be In Phase before going online.  GEM and compatriots had tried to warn about this and been silenced.  Art!

     The SOP was re-written and the third test went swimmingly.  I bet a few manglement heads went rolling after unnecessarily costing the business $2 million of entirely avoidable expense.   The devil is indeed in the details, especially when they're missing.

The Secret's Of Donold's Hair Helmet Revealed

Here's an hideously unflattering photo of DJ Tango outside in a stiff breeze, which I harvested from Twitter this morning.  Art!

     Clearly, the wind speed has exceeded the shear strength of his hairspray, and now you can see how bald he really is (sorry for the ghastly turkey neck wattles).  Doubtless he will call the person who took this photo a traitor, as well as the Tweeter who posted it, and especially Conrad for promoting it.

     He seems to be having trouble opening his eyes, which is odd, as the shadows indicate he had his back to the sun.  Tired, perhaps?  Posting 155 Truths until 5 a.m. will do that.

I Could Have Told You That

Your Humble Scribe was intrigued by a Youtube thumbnail from 'Johnny Johnson', who covers all sorts of military kit.  Art!

     This is the Dodge WC Weapons Carrier, which is a little confusing as 'WC' was Dodge production code for a truck produced in 1941, although it did indeed become a weapons carrier, also nicknamed the 'Beep' as a portmanteau of 'Big Jeep' since it massed 3/4 of a ton.  What you're looking at here is the artwork depicting one of them in action.  Art!

     JJ narrates that they were used in all theatres South Canada fought in, just in limited numbers as they weren't very effective.  The gun was only 37 mm, meaning it was obsolete as soon as it came into service, and could only fire through 180º, nor was the truck armoured in any way.  These faults mirror those of the British 'Portée' vehicles in North Africa, which were also unarmoured, could only fire through a limited arc and were a large, vulnerable target.  Art!

     Nobody consulted me about the WC WC.

Here's One From 10 Months Ago

     Ol' Vatnik Soup was playing a clip of Ruffian milblogger Maxim Kalashnikov, who was stating that the Ruffian summer offensive of 2025 would be it's last before economic collapse.  Well, the orcs spring offensive was a total failure with them losing more ground than they gained, and with losses averaging over 1,000 per day.  Overall the front lines have hardly moved and, of late the Kozaky medium-range drones are now actively hunting Ruffian vehicles - 200 kilometres behind the front lines.  The orcs cannot manage to accumulate troops for any kind of local attack, let alone an offensive, as any mass of soldiery is immediately spotted and FPV'd.

     Of course - obviously! - Conrad had to get his Comments in.  Art!

     Roll on July.  I bet DA has blocked me by then.

Finally -

I may have to venture to Sainsbo's on Saturday, supplies of Darjeeling Loose Leaf are getting dangerously low.

Foaming In The Coaming

Firstly, As Per Our Tradition

We need to define 'Coaming' as I'm pretty sure it's not a word you are familiar with.  It refers to the frame around an aircraft cockpit to keep out moisture, and if Art will put down his nuclear fuel rod for a second - 

     That's 'Coming Home Damaged' by Terence Cuneo as I thought a Lancaster Giant Flying Mallet would attract more traffic than a bit of coaming.  Still, let's get up the relevant picture.  Art!

     Now we are all far better-informed than we were five minutes ago.

     Let us now define 'Foam' as per my 'Collins Concise English Dictionary', which informs us that it is ' - a mass of small bubbles of gas formed on the surface of a liquid'.  

     What we're going to be discussing here is a verrry specific kind of foam.  Namely, the one used to fight fuel fires.  We covered this on BOOJUM! almost 2 years ago, in August 2024, when the Kozaky set the Ruffian Proletarsky refinery ablaze, which then burned for two weeks.  Art!

This homie got foamy

     You see, firefighting foam is designed to lie on the surface of any burning fuel and both cool and suffocate it, cutting off oxygen so it extinguishes the fire.  NO!  You cannot use water.  Di-hydrogen monoxide, to use the cod name, is heavier than fuel and would simply invert the fuel/water interface, thrusting the burning fuel atop into fresh air and battening the fire.  Herein the link -

BOOJUM!: Blight And Frothy

     ANYWAY today's Intro concerns a tale related by 3rd-party, about a newly-constructed aircraft hangar, the fire suppression system, and an idiot.  Art!

     An aircraft hangar.  They are typically enormous enclosed structures, built to keep delicate and hideously expensive aircraft safe and cosy.  What do modern aircraft hangars have?  Why, overhead suppression foam fire systems, of course - obviously!   

     So, the foreman and his crew were installing a foam fire suppression system in a newly-constructed aircraft hangar.  They were being overseen and instructed, not by the Owner, but by the Owner's Representative on-site, as some rich people are too busy to be where the action is.

     Here now follow some technical details, so neck your Red Bull and keep paying attention.  Art!

     Those dangly red bits are part of the hangar fire suppression system.  

     Stage One of the system was the diesel pump that would shove several hundred PROUD IMPERIAL gallons of water per minute into the hangar system.  This would impact six 500 gallon drums of foam reagent.  The reagent expanded 200 times it's original volume and poured down onto the hangar.

     That's how you suffocate a fire.  As beknownst to Master Installer of New Equipment, hereafter MINE.

     Whom else is present at this hangar?  Why, none other than Owner Representative of Entitlement and Stupidity, hereafter ORES.  Yes they were dense.  Art!

     What happens when one of these foam fire suppression systems reaches completion?  Why what Mythbusters might call 'Proof Of Viabliity', and I can see Jamie tweaking his moustache already.  Not, 'Does it work' but more 'It works thanks to this small-scale demonstration'.  

     As MINE instructed, thanks to years of experience, carrying out one of these tests used a fraction of the total reagents, producing perhaps 100 gallons of foam.  The entire hangar would be covered in foam to a depth of 10 PROUD IMPERIAL feet.  Art!

     MINE explicitly stated 'This is never a full test of the full capacity of the system'.  

     Guess who objected?  ORES.  Their argument was that the finished hangar would be housing many million dollars-worth of aircraft, so the system needed to be fully and completely tested.  They would not back down on this, so MINE had the foresight to write out a quick waiver document and have ORES sign it.  Art!

     This ought to have been a gigantic waving red flag the size of a football field.  Ought to.  For ORES presses on.

     MINE gives the signal and the suppression system kicks into action.  Within minutes the foam has reached and surpassed the 10' level and is, in fact, beginning to cover the control room windows where they are observing, 20' above ground level.  Art!

     Horrified, ORES demands that the test be halted.  This is easier said than done, as the minion who triggered the test now has to jog over to a completely different building to turn off the water.  Then, because of latency, water will still be entering the system, so they have to shut off each foam generator manually.

     By the time the system is shut down, the entire hangar is full of foam.  So, also, is the adjoining office suite, whose doors had not been secured against foam ingress.  

     Next day the owner turns up, breathing fire and brimstone, wanting to know why a full system flush had been run.  MINE simply gave them the form that ORES had completed and that was the last time anyone saw ORES on site.  MINE detailed that empying those 6 reagent drums cost $150,000.

     Oooops.

This Is Low Blow Hilarious

Conrad is not a fan of South Canadian late-night chat show programs, as they are all scripted by humble minions who don't get a fraction of the appreciation they ought to -

     ANYWAY Stephen Colbert had Andy Serkis on his program, and someone had the demented yet brilliant idea to have Andy read Donold Trump's social media posts in the character of Gollum.  Art!

     It killed me.  I couldn't watch without laughing and may still mis-key whilst writing this.  If King Piggy ever encounters this it's potential stroke material.

A Shout Out To 'Hazegrayart'

If you're not familiar, HGA is a CGI artist, whom takes fictional or speculative ideas and renders them via clips on Youtube.  We have already covered their 'Skyflash' adaptation from 'Thunderbirds', where they turn a model into the most frighteningly fast piece of kit in the sky.  Really, check it out.  Now, they have done a vlog on Project Orion.  Art!

     If you're paying attention then you will realise this is not an Apollo launch as the assembled vehicle is not remotely familiar.  Art!

     A 'chemical' launch, in that they use conventional rocket physics of combustible propellants.  Art!

     First stage separation.  The chemical booster is exhausted and falls away, releasing the nuclear propulsion mechanism for the Project Orion main assembly to go into operation.  Art!

     Which means detonating a small nuclear bomb behind the spacecraft, propelling it forwards thanks to kinetic energy.  Before you throw up your hands in horror, this system has been assessed as being practical since the Sixties, and was one of the motive power methods considered by Clarke and Kubrick on '2001'.  Art!

     Earth to Mars in 5 days.  With no reliance on Elong Tusk.

Doughy Slabcake

I am unsure if there is actually a recipe of that name, but thought I'd just pass around another terrible photograph of Donold Trump, because that's what I thought upon seeing it.  Art!

     He looks artificially inflated.  Too much yeast?  Not enough baking powder?  It looks like his head might come apart along the seams - what the heck was that horror film where  that happened?  Art!

     O yes, 'Van Helsing' from <shudders> 2004.  No, I couldn't get a shot of his head coming apart, you ghouls.  Use your imagination!

     O hang on a mo - Youtube to the rescue.  Art!

     You can see him giving an incoherent burbling rant on the White House lawn already, can't you?  With no correspondent daring to mention the whole Head Coming Apart thing.

Are You Hungary For More?

The new Magyar administration in Hungary has scared the Orbanazi holdovers so much that they are scrambling to get their assets out of Hungary before they can be confiscated or interned or seized.  To that end, Art!

     These are Orcban regime jets, which are now parking in Vienna, Austria, since if they try to park in Budapest, Hungary, they might be confiscated.

     Peter Magyar also further cemented his impeccable credentials by summoning the Ruffian ambassador to be severely chastised about drone-bombing Ukranian civilians.

     Methinks Putinpot is going to rue ever having lost the Weretoad's regime to democracy.