Stay Safe, Sergei

 I Did Think About About Using The Title -

"Matt the homo Russian spy" and decided that, perhaps, that would be crossing the boundary of Good Taste.

     This will take a while to develop.  Better go get a wet and a wad.  Okay!

     Back in the Eighties Conrad worked amongst a group of honest artisans doing landscape work, who were decent enough chaps if a little lacking in long-term strategic political assessment, of which Your Humble Scribe has enough to go around any community of less than a thousand members.  Art!

Marvel at the one-legged hopping robot!

     Yes yes yes I realise this has nothing to do with the Intro, I just wanted a cool default picture on Facebook.

     ANYWAY I did not hide my interest in Ruffia, which at the time was a key part of the Sinister Union, so thus we get the 'Commie' part as well as the 'spy'.  'Matt' because at that time I drank a lot of matte, which is a South American herbal drink with supposed energy-boosting capabilities.  'Homo' because this was the Eighties and there was no deadlier insult amongst a group of men.  I did try to argue that, were I a Sinister spy, I would surely avoid any of these activities or interests in order to not come under suspicion.  Sadly this did not work, as they explained that a slippery Sinister spy would OF COURSE resort to this glib and facile deflection because they were so slippery and Sinister.  Tautological reasoning if you ask me*.

     

Back when the Sinisters were a going concern

     What has any of this to do with anything?  Okay, bear in mind that Tsar Poutine has basically brought about Sinister Union 2.0, and that you and your family and friends and neighbours and co-workers and that lady across the road walking her dog can be sent to the gulags for 25 years for anything less than boot-licking adulation of the balding little git, if you live in Ruffia.  Believe me, a Ruffian prison today has all the hallmarks of a Victorian gaol as of 1850, and adheres to a value system quite the same.  "Is there any way out of here?" asked a Western journalist documentary crew to the head of a Ruffian prison a few years ago.  He smiled like a shark and indicated the institution's cemetery**.  Apologies to sharks.  Art!

Quite possibly that very documentary

     And now to the meat of the matter.  If you recall recently then you remember that Conrad posted a Blogger analytics map of the world, which shows those nations whose good taste runs to reading BOOJUM!  Typically the South Canadians top the list, because Conrad uses long obscure words that help to enlarge their vocabulary.  We had one  - ONE! - reader in Ruffia, brave soul that they were.  Now - Art!

'40'

     Apparently Sergei went off and told his friends 'Hey there's this bonkers blog that witters on about all sorts of shizzle and guess what ...'  Do be careful, sweet things, because you won't get internet access in a gulag and we need your traffic.

      Of course, it could be Sergei is uncomfortably sitting in a police station with 39 FSB officers logged on alongside him, all wondering and pondering 'What on earth is this?'.  Don't worry, chaps, your defence can only be 'He is not connected with reality', which reminds me of someone ...

     

"CONRAD!  Stop using me as a get-out-of-jail-free card!"

     O don't I like to pontificate.  Next!

I Don't Like To Share Credit

Credit, money, food or beer.  Yet here we are again, with Steve and Oscar making a play for 'Associate Producer' credits thanks to throwing out random word sequences.  Today's is "Too Late The Phalarope", which will take some explaining.  This is the title of a Fifties novel by South African author Alan Paton, after the apartheid system had come into operation.  Art!

     The 'Phalarope' of the title is a species of SA bird, and if Art can bring himself back to consciousness after his nuclear-fuel rod binge - 

Quite the cutie.  Also delicious roasted.

     The novel itself seems to be about a SA policeman having forbidden nookie with a black lady, which way back then was punishable by death or almost.  Why it popped up in my mind is a question only Steve and Oscar can answer.  I think the title means that the roast was done before the boiled potatoes were ready.

Bring On The Torment

If you recall the last extract from "Tormentor" then you'll know Luma had just opened his front door to a set of four policemen, with a search warrant.  Let matters develop ...

‘Yes what is it now?’

               Sergeant Oswald held up a sheet of typed paper, signed at the bottom.

               ‘I am Detective Sergeant Oswald, CID, this is Detective Sergeant Moss and this is a search warrant for your property here and your premises at college.’

               What the hell? thought Louis, too surprised to speak for a second.  The foursome moved inside, making him back into the lounge.

               ‘PC Dalton will remain here with you, Mister McMahon, while we search the house,’ informed the now-identified detective.

               ‘Fine.  I’ll just sit here and wait.’

               ‘Could you stand, sir, in the middle of the room?  Without touching anything,’ asked the constable, more in a telling voice than a requesting one.

               ‘Fine!  The guns are in my bedroom and the drugs are in the bathroom!’

               The other three police officers went upstairs, spending ten minutes banging and clumping around before coming downstairs.

               ‘How do you get into the attic?’ asked Oswald.

               ‘With a ladder, which is in the garage.  Am I allowed to get the key from my pocket?’

               The silver balls clacked and clinked in his pocket when he got the key out.  Naturally this intrigued Oswald, who looked at Louis and raised an eyebrow.

               ‘Sergeant Moss, please check Mister McMahon’s personal effects.’

               These amounted to a set of keys, loose change, ten silver balls and a receipt from the jewellers.

               ‘Silver balls.  And what are they for?’ asked Moss.

               Louis forced himself not to rise to that opening.

               ‘Decoration.  I like silver balls.’

     I shall mirror Luma's higher moral ground here, where I could have resorted to umpteen vulgar puns. HOWEVER we are still SFW.

Shall We?  Yes We Shall!

Another photograph from the Sony Big Bash Photo Phest, or whatever it's called.  Art!

     Here we see the assembled massed umbrellas of a workshop in Myanmar.  Not sure if we should be featuring this given the state of civil war there - which we will probably come back to.

Finally -

We've already referenced the 'Special' Military Operation, and here Conrad would like to talk about casualty statistics.  Neither side can be particularly trusted, although the Ruffians with 4.58 casualties in three and a half weeks are rather more suspicious than the Ukes.  How do you have 0.58 of a casualty?  

     ANYWAY it is a truism of battlefield casualties that, for every fatality, you have at least two to three injured.  You can view this through the lens of history, as the British army suffered 19,000 dead in their first day attacking on the Somme, as against 57,000 casualties total.  Art!

     There are sober, conservative South Canadian estimates stating that the Ruffians have lost 7,000 dead in Ukraine so far.  Then they add on 14,000 or 21,000 injured on top of that, which is just what I explained above.  These are lower-bound numbers and still amount to 20,000 casualties at least, without factoring in surrendered Ruffians, nor Ruffians who have simply deserted.  Which is more than a 10% loss rate for the SMO, and if Dimya's plan goes on 'according to plan' then he's going to run out of cannon fodder.  And who designed this Mighty Military Plan?

JONESY!

*   I know you didn't; I like to get my retaliation in first.

**  Mind you, these were inmates so bad they made Hannibal Lecter look like a kindly old uncle.