I Suppose O Noes -

There Is More To Taking Over The World Than You Might Realise

Essentially (yes I know I use that word too often but would you prefer Conrad used 'Basically'? no I thought not.  You may now continue) the background planning and research never stops.  You need to keep tabs on all the major powers and most of the medium ones, too.  

Case in point

It's vital to understand what's going on at the UN, who is In and who is either Out or on the way there.  How are the various giant multi-nationals faring?  Individual billionaire oligarchs? (don't bother with the mere millionaires, not important enough).  Potential break-through technologies that might threaten my starship invasion fleet?  Plus I have to learn from the lessons of the past and those who've failed in their World Domination attempts.  Yes, Herr Schickelgruber, I'm looking at you.  Then Your Humble Scribe has to plot and plan his seizure of power whilst evading the police, MI5, Homeland Security, the FSB, the Deuxieme Bureau, UNIT and those insufferably nosey beggars at Spectrum.  I tell you, Apprentice World Dictator is a twenty-four/seven kind of job.  Art!

     This is where the O Noes come in.  Yesteryon I was waffling on about having discovered "The Expanse Season Six", which would have been ten hours of distraction if Wonder Wifey hadn't threatened disembowelment with a potato peeler if I logged onto Amazon Prime and caused her expense.  Now I discovered that I've got access to Disney + - and the distraction level immediately escalates to many hundreds of hours - see above for what Conrad is delicately sipping a Pink Gin to.  Not merely a season but DOZENS OF SEASONS ACROSS TEN THOUSAND CHANNELS*.

     'Free Guy'?  <derisive snort>  You do realise this enormous distraction is going to help keep EARTH free, not just Guy?  Besides which, I have reached Page 700 in "Reclaiming History" meaning only another 800 to go.  Art!

Planet Earth.  Great while it lasted.

     Now, if you will kindly permit, I shall go down and stir my stew and then try a bowlful.  Can't be swilling Pink Gin on an empty stomach.

For A Change Of Pace

Let us hie us hence to that grandfather of South Canadian art, Charles Marion Russell, who, as you should surely know by now, set out to depict the Old West in oils.  By the time he was painting the Old West had pretty much gone, which is not to say that it's resident South Canadians had settled down to a life of white picket fences, bow ties and family songs around the harmonium.  Take this one as an example - Art!

"Whose meat?"

     A most pertinent question.  The 'meat' under - er - discussion is the goat at lower starboard, which seems to have been shot by the Hom. Sap. currently wielding a rifle.  His dilemma is whether to back off or not, as Mister Bear (or, even worse, Mama Bear) has also got eyes on the prey and looks in a mood to contest the carcase.  If it was a black bear, then they are utter cowards and a shot in it's direction would send it packing.  On the other hand it might be a grizzly, and they can book it like a galloping steed, and they are VERY aggressive when they feel like it.

Back To The Blue

Thank you.  Yes, another photographic excursion courtesy of the BBC and their themed exhibition, on 'Into The Blue'.  Art!

Courtesy Harald Loeffler

     This is a shot of a gas fire pit, with the gas turned down low.  Conrad is unsure what a 'gas fire pit' is, as he associates this type of fuel and furnace with barbecues, but that may be just me viewing a picture via my stomach.  Shall we?  O go on then.  Art!

     Hmmmm.  It seems to be purely for heating purposes.  Boring.  I suppose you could toast a marshmallow or two over it, just nothing that would drip liquids onto the pit itself.

No Gas without Fire, hmmmm?

     Here you see our own version of a pit with a bit of blue added in - Andrew Keir for some reason the art director thought was a good idea at the time.

     Hmmmm.  We appear to have gotten a little off-course.

It's A Job For "Tormentor"!

As you should surely recall, Luma had been startled awake in the dead of night by a spirit summons, and is aware that an unclean entity is in his bedroom ...

Louis silently cursed, viewing what he’d only seen before in elaborate film special effects.  The Professor and Yvonne were impaled on multiple tentacular extrusions that came from a vast, pulsing mass of sticky black ooze high in a corner of his room; whilst Yvonne merely looked distressed, the Professor’s chest had exploded outwards, revealing a mass of wispy smoke in the interior.  Two huge eyes opened in the repulsive oily muck, the whites and pupils all over the place, darting everywhere.  An out-of-place enormous human mouth opened suddenly in the creature’s middle, composed of wet pink flesh and tombstone-sized teeth, a tongue the size of a pillow lolling in the centre.  A ghastly rotting stench, like damp meat left out in the sun, came to Louis across the room.

               ‘OH HO OH.  HELLO LOUIS.  IF YOU HAD TO CHOOSE WHICH WOULD IT BE.  WITCH OR BITCH.  WHORE OR BORE.  HALF-CUT OR SLUT.’

               The trick with these entities, he had read, was not to take any challenge they made on their own terms, especially those that involved friends or family members.

               ‘I’d rather not choose, thanks.  Can I get my domestic help back?’

               ‘NO.  ANSWER THE QUESTION.’

               ‘I’ve got no terms of reference.’

               ‘MAKE YOUR CHOICE.’

               ‘If I keep you chatting, will you suffer a breakdown?’

               ‘FOOL!’ boomed the creature, making Louis wonder that nobody else could hear it.  He reached across and turned on the bedside lamp, making the disgusting mass even more disgusting to look at.  The smell got even worse thanks to getting closer.

     Ah yes, how many of you out there would trade places with Luma now, you who have been admiring how cool it would be to interact with the spirit world?

Here An Aside

One amusing detail from "Reclaiming History" by Ol' Vinny concerns Lee Harvey Oswald's residence in the Sinister Union, which was a cut above the bargain basement apartments most Sinister Union residents ever got access to.  Small, yet well-appointed and with a spectacular view, which is very nice but you can't eat it.  Art!

Lee and Marina

     Even when they went to bed at night, after having turned every electrical appliance off, their electricity meter still turned.  Why?  Because of the bugs the KGB had planted, of course - obviously!

Finally - 

Like poking at a tooth cavity, we return to the subject of what's going on in Ukraine, with Your Humble Scribe's thoughts on the matter.  Here I parrot what Perun, astute Ocker vlogger, put together about "Reservists and Irregulars in Ukraine", on both sides of the equation.  This chap really knows his onions, and I wouldn't be surprised if more than a few of his audience are FSB members, looking to see where they went wrong.  Art!

Uke National Guards.
They look to be of my age and stature.

     As Perun points out, in all those tables of how gigantically over-matched the Ukes were, their Border Guard and National Guard were not included in the totals.  Granted, these are not front-line military units, but they are quite capable of taking over secondary and support roles, freeing-up the regulars.

     On the Ruffian side, because this is a 'Special' Military Operation, most emphatically NOT a war, they can't send conscripts to fight outside Ruffia.  Of course - obviously! - Tsar Poutine ignored this initially when he thought the wa - SMO would be over in mere days.  Now he's constrained by law, so the Ruffian military are wriggling like worms on a hook to find non-conscript bodies in uniform they can whiz off to Ukraine.  Art!

     These are the 'Rodgvardiya', Ruffian National Guard.  Don't let the uniforms fool you, these chaps' level of skill is beating unarmed civilian protesters.  As they have found out at the sharp end, coming up against better-trained, better-led and better-motivated troops with guns who shoot back sends them running like schoolgirls.  A consequence of putting bodies in uniforms at all costs because once again IT'S NOT A WAR. 

     Yeah right.

     I think we've done enough, Dimya's vodka cocktails have been sufficiently diluted by his weeping into them.  Chin Chin!

*  It looked like ten thousand.  Definitely a lot.