BOOJUM!: I Lied

You Can't Always Believe What You Read

Especially not here, you need to take everything on BOOJUM! with a positive pillar of sodium chloride, except when we're being truthful, which is mostly some of the time, apart from when we're not.

'Has the old fool been at the cooking sherry already?' I hear you quibble, and pausing only to point out that sherry is the Devil's very own sinus-drainings, I shall explicate. Art!

Yeah, I once made a milkshake and flavoured it with sherry; it was ghast

ANYWAY I used the image above as an - er - enticer for the late-night blog linkage traditional on a Sunday, and then claimed to know nothing about it.

Welllllllllll that's not entirely true. In fact it's a downright lie.

Okay, we can tell that this is South Canadian in origin, because of the driver's position in the car - that is, they are sitting on the wrong side*. Then, too, we can also assume that the lady in red was expecting an evening at the night club, because you don't wear a slinky scarlet figure-hugging dress like that if intending to go hopping it through a cornfield. Note, also, the ear-rings and bracelets. No purse, which might be where she kept her .45 - hey a girl might have to get serious with Mister Handsy - because that's one accoutrement you wouldn't get past the bouncers on the door. Art!

I did a reverse-image search, you see, and it transpires that the artist for the above is one Robert Maguire, it being one of his better-known opus. Opii? Opi? Works, anyway. Ol' Bob seems to have been a quite prolific artist, specialising in almost-but-not-quite SFW paintings of young ladies not wearing a lot, or of wearing it skin-tight, for the purpose of separating young men from their dollars. Art!

Sorry the taglines are unreadably blurred

Conrad, of course - obviously! - is delighted at having discovered this resource, because it means a huge number of sordid, sleazy cover illustrations that nevertheless are still SFW, being a win-win all round. Mary Whitehouse is no doubt spinning in her grave at 563 r.p.m.

Remember The Dazexiang Revolt Of 209 BC?

Ah yes. It comes down to the Qin dynasty being bottomholes. What's their penalty for arriving late at a garrison? Death. What's the penalty for rebelling against the Qin? Death. One finds it hard to find any sympathy for a regime so stupid (hi, Dimya!). Here's another question. What's the Qin punishment for allowing prisoners to escape? Death. What's the penalty for rebelling against the Qin? Stop me if you've heard this one before.

Enter Liu Bang NO SNIGGERING AT THE BACK! Art?

He had been charged with escorting a party of prisoners, some of whom escaped. Once again, what's the penalty for rebelling against the regime? Okay, he started a revolt that eventually ended the Qin dynasty, put that in your pipe and smoke it.

I Found A Theme At The BBC!

Actually a whole pile of themes, these will keep us in business for months. Anything that takes the heavy lifting out of the creativity process O THE BURDEN OF BEING UNCEASINGLY CREATIVE THE BURDEN is welcome, so let's pop back and have a look at the sordid underbelly of Los Angeles, because vice is often a whole lot more captivating than virtue. Art!

James 'Two-gun' Davis
(Courtesy Cliff Wesselman)

This chap was the Chief Of Police in the Thirties, which is like giving the fox the hen-coop keys, shooing it in and locking the door behind it. He was so corrupt James Elroy used him as a character in his novels, which is saying something. That saying 'So crooked he makes a corkscrew look straight' was probably created in reference to him. Art!

Yup, that's how they handled evidence back in the Thirties, even murder weapons.

Enough of this sordid underbelly stuff, on with the torment!

More More "Tormentor"

Don't worry, we're coming to the end of this long-form fiction (can't really call it a 'book', can we?).

There – he stepped out of the encircling shrubbery, into an amphitheatre created by the landscaped horticulture. Three figures at the far end of the football pitch huddled under a set of battered metal goalposts.

‘Wait here,’ he warned his companions. ‘Whatever happens DO NOT come out onto that pitch! Clear?’ and he was away before they could reply.

Both parties made their way to the centre of the football pitch. Louis tripped frequently on the hard, irregular ground churned into scalloped turf by countless boots.

The closer he got the less he liked what he saw.

Angela – Angela was fine. Well, not fine exactly. Terrified out of her wits, but still completely human and mortal. Her normally tautly drawn features were a mask of fear and despair.

The captors –

‘Set her free!’ he called, trying to be quiet yet still penetrating.

One of the kidnappers waved him forward. When he took a step towards them, Angela moved a single step away from her captors. This slow process repeated until he stood next to her.

‘Ange. I can’t say sorry enough for this. Here - ’ and he clasped her hands in his. ‘Dave is directly behind us. Follow my tracks in the grass and you’ll get to him.’

Her haunted, delicate features looked more ghostly than Yvonnne.

‘Luma – what’s going on?’

‘If I get back alive I’ll tell you. You may not make much sense of it.’

They carried on, moving further apart as Louis got closer to the kidnappers, who were not human. Not any more.

Oooh, exciting! At least I hope it is. Since nobody has added a single Comment about it I shall take it as read that everyone loves loves loves it, and will continue to post more long-form fiction extracts forever, because believe me I've got enough of them to manage that, easily**.

Finally -

Another pontification session from Conrad, where he holds sway (at least in his own head) about the 'Special' Military Operation. We mentioned briefly yesteryon that an Iskander missile costs £6 million, which is much higher than Conrad's back-of-a-fag-packet calculation of £4.5 million, although I don't think I did too badly. What I wanted to find was how many of these missiles the Ruffians had fired at Ukraine, which is surprisingly difficult to discover. Art!

The most recent figure I came across is 1,080, which means the Ruffians have fired off the equivalent of almost £6.5 billion - and I seem to recall that a BBC news item said that their Iskander bombardment has significantly slowed of late, probably meaning that they're running out of them, and thanks to sanctions they're not going to be building any more. Nowhere have I been able to find a figure for their total pre-wa - sorry, pre-SMO arsenal.

I also noted one Professor Phillips O'Brien commenting on the Ruffians conduct in the Donbass. Conrad believed that the Battalion Tactical Groups who Deliberately Retreated From Kiev Because It's All Going According To Plan would have been given a time-out before being thrown at the Uke front lines. Rest, replenish, reinforce, remotivate - but no. They've simply been thrown into combat the minute they arrived, which the Prof describes as either 'Stupidity or desperation'. Perhaps both? And despite Dimya loudly declaring that Mariupol is not to be stormed, guess what? It's being stormed. Ah well.