W.O.E. Is Me

 Pay Attention!

There may be a quiz later.  No, I am not full of sadness and despair, rather full of pink gin and limejuice.  "W.O.E." is our SFW abbreviation of "What on earth", which we obviously - of course! - use instead of the more common, infinitely coarser version.

     "What is the poisonous old git burbling about now?" I hear you quibble, and pausing only to point out that I cannot be that toxic if the Coincidence Hydra is always trying to take a big bite out of my nethers, I shall explicate.  Art!

"But - Conrad has such a tasty, tender butt"

     Traffic stats.  You know, the representation of how many victims viewers BOOJUM! has inveigled into a visit, which probably includes some who think they're going to visit a Lewis Carroll fan site*.  Art!

151

     This is unprecedented for a Thursday lunchtime.  I'd be lucky to get these figures with a post on Sunday, with all the clickable links to past blogs.  Conrad remembers about seven years ago when the tracking algorithm went potty and I had flattering yet totally inaccurate totals like 900 hits in a day.  Has this glitch returned?

     <crosses room to pour out more tea>

     I know what you're thinking LOOK D.A.R.P.A. GOT THEIR TELEPATHY HELMET BACK AGES AGO GOT IT and no, those sacked FSB officers haven't logged back in to view the blog without fear or worry, not unless they've left the country, because - Art!

     Hmmmm I wonder, I wonder - have the figures for Italy or Turkey gone up?  ANYWAY it's nice to see Vanya, Anya and (probably) Dimya reading BOOJUM! again, because where else can you read the finest scrivel extant?

     O corks!  It's gone up to 154 now.
     In case you wonder why I worry about being successful and getting huge traffic numbers, this is simply because this blog gleefully slanders and libels, plus I bet a lot of the images we use are actually copyrighted, even if we do attribute where we feel like it.  None of the editorial staff here (Art, Steve, Oscar and myself) make a penny from the blog, so there's no profit motivation driving us, merely a desire to look witty and clever.  Handsome?  Hmmm that ship sailed a long time ago.

     Motley!  Break out the javelins and we'll have a javelin-dodging tournament in the back garden.  Art!

Yeah, yeah, I know what you were expecting

     <thinks: perhaps it was the One Trillion Lions topic?>

"Into The Blue"

Yes, back to the BBC's themed photography collection.  If there are still entries left - let me check before repeating an old picture - O we're still in business.  Art!

Courtesy Nadia Badinelli

     O NOES!  GIANT BEE INVASION ATTACK SAVE YOURSELVES, GENTLE READERS SAVE Y

     Ah.  It's a close-up.  Okay, ignore Your Humble Scribe's cowardly ravings.  Patently, you can't get any closer to the title than this, can you?  Taken on the photographers allotment.  Keep your fingers crossed for these little chaps, if they die out we have perhaps five years left.

Here's Another Theme For You

Whilst everyone else is off gadding about in airplanes and cruise ships, Conrad is manfully doing his dog-sitting duties looking after Edna.  Allow me to upload a few evidentiary shots of her being Edna.  Art!

Despondently waiting for attention and food

The morning maunder

"Keeping it warm for you"

     There you go family members, that should keep you going for another day or two.  Currently Madam is sitting on the settee as in Photo One, having done her duty as she sees it by barking madly at the postie when he came by.  Which reminds me to go see what he delivered.

Good Morning Sunshine

You can't really get a greater divergence in South Canadian locations that New Jersey and California, can you?  Even the names tell a story.  Art!

This is Hobo Ken

     - and he's welcome to the grimy industrial wart.  Art!

Guess where?

     Okay, now let us have a nosy at Big Bear Solar Observatory, a South Canadian observatory that specialises in - you may be ahead of me here - studying the sun.  It sits in the San Bernardino mountains of southern California, yet is an adjunct of the New Jersey Institute of Technology.  Bummer of a daily commute, hmmm?  Art!

     It's deliberately built out on Big Bear Lake because this body of water cools the observatory's surroundings, eliminating heat artefacts in observation and photography.  Art!

     Being up a mountain in the middle of nowhere also eliminates light pollution and atmospheric distortion.  Art!

     And that is all.

More More "Tormentor"

Don't fret so, we're nearing the end.  Of course, I then have hundreds of thousands of words from various Doctor Who fanfictions to upload <cackles and tweaks moustache ends>.

Louis fell asleep reading “The Thirty Years War”, the volume he’d taken out from the college library.  First of all he’d skimmed the maps and reproduction woodcuts, coming to realise that the war had been an horrendous protracted butchery across Northern Europe where life wasn’t simply cheap, it had no value at all.

               From disturbed dreams where men with halberds and matchlockes pursued him, Louis awoke to the ringing of his mobile phone.  It flashed and sang on the bedside table until he picked it up (1:42)  and answered.

               ‘What the **** is it!’ he snarled, unhappy at being woken from anything less than a nightmare.

               ‘Lou?’ asked a panicky voice.  ‘Dave.  It’s Dave Hargreaves.  Listen, they’ve got Ange.’

               Louis punched the wall.  Ow.  It hurt.  Okay, he wasn’t dreaming.

               ‘Who?  Who’s got Ange?’ he asked.  ‘If this is your scummy mates pulling a fast one - ’

               ‘It’s not them!’ raged Dave.  ‘They told me to ring you.  Said the codeword is “Morgan”, whatever that means.’

               Louis was out of bed and hitting the light-switch without having to think about it.

               ‘They say not to ring the cops, that they’ll know straight away if we do. Any funny business and they chill Ange.’

               Difficult as it was to get dressed one-handed whilst talking into a phone, Louis managed it.

               ‘Don’t call anyone, for Chr – for heaven’s sake, they’re absolutely right.  Where are you?’

               ‘At Ange’s.’

               ‘Right.  I’ll be there in about two minutes.’

     Crikey, things really have gone pear-shaped, haven't they?  Whatever next!  That's a rhetorical question, I already know.  You lot, however, will have to wait until tomorrow.  Yes I am on holiday today, no you do not get two new posts.  I have a life beyond the blog, palsied and pallid maybe but still there.

Finally - 

This is the bit where Conrad puts on his best poseur uniform and comments on what Dimya's up to in Ukraine, SO! if you are a big fan of Tsar Poutine, an ardent Ruffian patriot or just fed up with the bleakness of modern existence, you may want to jump to the end.

     The news today is that there won't be any attempt by the Ruffians to storm the final Uke position in Mariupol, a vast, rambling steelworks where a couple of thousand Uke soldiers are still fighting.  AFTER NEARLY TWO MONTHS!  Art?

Before

     This is distinctly odd.  Doubtless Dimya will claim victory and that he's got nearly all the city, which by wild coincidence is what Herr Schickelgruber claimed about Stalingrad.  And we know how that ended.

     So, no final assault.  And the Ruffians have loudly brayed at the Ukes to surrender - twice.  They've not done that anywhere else.

     Conrad suspects - we're not going to get accurate casualty figures until Tsar Poutine is long gone - that the reason for the surrender demands and the unwillingness to mount a final assault is because the Ruffian Battalion Tactical Groups in Mariupol have suffered such losses that they're now Company Tactical Groups.  Art!

A Battalion Tactical Group - ON PAPER

     You see, a BTG is supposed to be 1,000 men strong (again, on paper).  In reality they are always undermanned, with a nominal strength of 800.  Or that's what their Colonel claims, when he's in fact only got 600 men, so he can pocket the pay of 200 fictional soldiers. So the supposed six BTGs that were besieging Mariupol, rather than having 6,000 men, only had around 3,500 before the fighting began.  And urban combat is notoriously costly.

     So we may see yet another Ruffian claim as to what they are trying to achieve in Ukraine.  Originally it was 'De-nazify and demilitarise Ukraine', then it was '"Liberate" Donbass' which isn't going swimmingly.  Now their excuse might become 'A land-bridge from Crimea to Donbas'.

     Time will tell.

*  Er - NO.