Gee Whiz

To Coin A Phrase
You see - which would be "UC" if I were in a punning mood - in the Ruffian language there is no letter "H", so a helicopter would be a "gelicopter" and they'd probably make the claim that they invented it first, though it sounds a bit flimsy when put like that.

Thus

     Thank you, Art.   "Death From Above" only if you're a diabetic.
     Anyway, what I wanted to rant and tant about this morning was a bottle of beer I happened to come across at the Co-Op, which was productive as I had been hovering over the beer bottles, seeing if there was one that lent itself to a bit of punnery.  Art?

     <small drum roll> so, in Ruffia, this would be "Gopnik".
     Which brings us to the cultural phenomenon from Ruffia known as the "Gopnik".  This fad appears to have run it's course, which is fine as BOOJUM! cannot be accused of being either detrimental or exploitative*.   Art?

Gopniki

     I think the closest thing in English to a Gopnik is a "chav".  Gopniks wear Western sports clothing, typically Adidas, whilst also hating the West with a furious intensity that must create quite some cognitive dissonance.  They have a peculiar squatting pose that typifies them and is said to be acquired from their lengthy incarcerations in prison; you don't sit on the floor in a Ruffian gaol or you'll freeze your nethers off.  Literally.  Sit on the floor, go to stand up, leave a considerable portion of your bottom behind.  Thus, the Gopnik squat.
     Because they come from a miserably impoverished background, they can only afford cheap smokes and booze; if you examine the labels on the bottles above I'll bet they're the Ruffian equivalent of a generic brandless six-pack, and their fags will either be made of floor-sweepings or hand-rolled and a millimetre thick.

More Gopniki!

     Needless to say, their behaviour and manners are not good.  Not good at all.  In fact, in the old Sinister Union, they'd probably all be swept off the streets, put in uniform and sent to fight the Chinese along the Ussuri River.  And then left there.
     Ooops!  I should apologise about the "G" of today's title.  That was a soft "G" and the "G" in "Gopnik" is hard.
     A Hard G.  Sounds like something from "The Expanse", a quote from Alex perhaps -
     "This is the Roci, and we are burning a hard g, all the way from Ceres Station, inbound for Phobos, catcha in twenny-five -"


     Who knew there was a model kit?  Not I.  Not only that, they have it IN AN EXACT SCALE.  This is worrying.  Perhaps - yes yes yes, I realise we've gone wildly off-topic, but what the heck, you don't have to pay to read this, do you? - we can come up with a depiction of the completed kit?


    From the box art, that seems to be one of the Point Defence Cannons firing at the bow, and Conrad is unsure what that tower arrangement is.  Medium-range anti-torpedo countermeasures?
     From the above you can get a sense of scale for the kit.  That is, it's fairly large in 1:144 scale.  Your Humble Scribe wonders what size something like the "Donnager" would be.  As big as a car and almost as expensive, one feels.

The Rocinante, back when it was the Tachi, inside the Donnager.

     Well, motley, let us now combine both Ruffia and The Expanse -

Tah-dah!

"Epistolatory"
YES!  That's the word I couldn't think of that described "World War Z".  It means a literary work composed of letters and correspondence, which to be fair is not strictly true about WWZ, as it's supposedly transcriptions of recorded interviews.  You will cut me some slack on that, won't you?  Thank you!


The narrator's digital friend

     From what our un-named narrator says, he is the world's worst typist and thus was extremely grateful for his digital box of tricks.  Conrad suspects that one could connect it to a PC and then download all the spoken information, then print it out.  Hay Pesto, instant best-seller!
     Mind you, "Epistolatory" is probably from the Sixteenth Century, when a digital recording device would be thought of as the Devil's handiwork, so I think we can stretch it to cover a device as above.

"Black House" By Stephen King and Peter Straub
Blimey, this one's taken an age to get going.  A quarter of the way through before things move into second gear.  I shouldn't really complain as I like the narrative, but good lord aloft, did the editor die before they submitted the MSS?  And the assistant editor was too awestruck to say "Fellers, a little less, thanks"?  I can confirm that I now know a great deal about Coulee County and French Landing, and the Maxton Care Home and the residents in the care home and the manager of the care home and his girlfriend -

My edition

     And do you know what?  We've had maybe a page and a half about the black house, and I'm well over page 200 now.  That black house had better be pretty special, I'm telling you.

Special!  O so special!

Conrad Is ANGRY!
ANGRY ANGRY ANGRY! <pauses to eat a Babybel cheese**>.
     Not only does that carton of olives bought cheap consist entirely of UNPITTED olives, which is close to getting referred to the ICC, IT HAS LEAKED.  Consequently my lunchbag has a veneer of oil on the inside that has soaked through completely and contaminated my desk.  I shall be forced to wash it once I get home.
     CONRAD IS ANGRY!

Finally -
Proof that both Nature and Planet Earth have an ironic sense of humour.  I refer - obviously! - to the Antipodes, Australia in particular.  You can only have avoided knowing that they have been having a lot of enormous bushfires, so big that their smoke trails are easily visible from space.  Art?

Proof

     The Ocker's fire services and volunteers have been trying heroically to stop or minimise these firestorms, with limited results.
     "What we need is rain!" they all chorused.
     Be careful what you wish for ...

Surprise!

     New South Wales has been hit by the worst rains and flooding in 30 years.  Up to four times the rainfall for the whole of February fell in one day.  But it did immediately put out half the fires in the state.
     Silver linings, silver linings ...

     And with that, we are done!


*  Not that we'd give a stuff either way.
**  There is always time for cheese