Conradilletante

Ha!  Gotcha There

I was up at 09:30 this morning, and after the traditional day-off maundering about on teh Interwebz, I hailed me hence to the kitchen at 11:00 thinking "O I'll get lots of Intro done before 12 mid-day'.

     Of course that didn't happen.  I had breakfast to make, and then the laundry to sort out, and then OF COURSE - OBVIOUSLY! - there were several vlogs I had to check out as - as - er - Background Information!  Yeah, yeah, background information.  Art!

     That's a Churchill 'Ark' variant being used to bridge an incline too steep for other vehicles.  Nothing to do with anything, I just like the shot.

     ANYWAY yeah, one of those vlogs was from Suchomimus, an expatriate Brit from Nottingham who works in Taiwan and who had concentrated on vlogs about fossils before Peter The Average's Special Idiotic Operation.  Ol' Such has been having trouble with Youtube's algorithms, which reject lots of his stuff for no very clear reason.  He puts links within the content to his Patreon page, which displays the stuff YT won't allow. Art!

     That's Engels air base inside Ruffia getting a right pasting.  Incidentally, 'Engels' refers to Friedrich Engels, a very well-off Teuton socialist philosopher, who could afford to be radical.

     Why am I putting this in the Intro?  Because it has such serious implications for the VDV, the Ruffian air force, since Engels is where they base their Tu-160 and Tu-95 strategic bombers.  These are the Ruffian equivalent of the South Canadian's B-52.  Their primary role is to carry nuclear cruise missiles and retarded-delivery nuclear bombs; they are what the geeks like to call the 'air-breathing' part of the nuclear triad, and are frankly slumming it in blowing up Ukrainian apartment blocks.  Art!

Tu-160: a nice-looking bird

The rather less-attractive Tu-95

     There were only 36 Tu-160s and 42 Tu-95s in service when the SIO began, so not a lot of 'airframes' as the geeks like to call them.  There were a couple of 'Bears' (NATO name) damaged earlier in December at Engels, and Ukraine only recently seriously damaged 5 more, with 2 more being less critically banged-up.  Not only that, the Bear stopped being produced ages ago, so any damage cannot be repaired and Hey Pesto! the Ruffians are now down to 34 of them.  Another, Ukrainian source (to be taken with a dose of salts) alleges that 6 Tu-160s were damaged.  If true that's their numbers down to 30.  Art!

Sad?  Hungover?  Constipated?  Only you can tell!

     This is the chap who's going to have to make decisions about his strategic bomber force, which was not that large to begin with at 78 bombers.  If it's down to 64 that's 17% of Ruffia's strategic bombers lost, when they need all they've got because of Bloaty Gas Tout's constant threatening with the Big Nuclear Stick.

     In fact the facts are even worse, because 43 aircrew and base staff became casualties, supposedly because they were in the control tower being briefed, which is the equivalent of 4 bomber crews.  O, the control tower is a shattered remnant, too.  Art!

     Were I Shoggy I'd pull these irreplaceable airframes beyond the Ural Mountains to ensure no more got destroyed.  They should have done this after the earlier Ukrainian attack in December, instead of shrugging and carrying on under Business As Usual.  Well, now their nuclear triad deterrent has been seriously undermined.  Expect Petroleum Pimp to have a minion arrested and imprisoned.

     Yes, this Intro has been about the Special Idiotic Operation.  Once again, whose blog is it?

Conrad's Korean Cooking Continues

Note how I did not resort to the 'hilarious' use of the initial 'K' in any of that title.  Because we have some standards here.  Conrad's had a couple of pork chops sitting in the fridge, maturing, and decided to look and see if there were any decent Korean recipes for same.  Well yes!  Art!

     This is 'Korean BBQ Pork', and we have all the ingredients for it, whoopee ('Seoultown Cooking' always needs something I haven't got).  I would have guessed at some, but not the apple and onion.  It needs to sit overnight before cooking.  I may post a picture of it, even.

More On The Theme Of 'Bright Lights'

Thanks, Auntie Beeb, for making the heavy lifting less heavy.  Art!

Courtesy Ian West.  He comments on the 'Taxi' sign but what Conrad likes about this particular shot are all the different multi-coloured lights in the unfocussed background, implying lots of activity in a bustling city centre.  Definitely in South Canada, yet un-named, so I'm going for New York.

"The Sea Of Sand"

'Murraycol', the small British task force, is going down, but not without a fight.

Aghast, the three occupants of the Sahariana watched from the safety of a hollow in the sands.  The whole column stood immobile, as the deadly black tanks grew larger and larger.

          ‘Why don’t they debus?’ asked Tam.  Torrevechio guessed the question’s meaning and gestured a man touching a hot object.

          ‘The sand got turned to – well, it must be glass, mustn’t it?  Molten glass is ferociously hot.  Must be waiting for it to cool down, but they have to get moving before those things get here.’

          Hurry up!  Hurry up! Roger shouted to himself.  He groaned in despair as the visible occupants of the vehicles began to slump over, victims of the paralysing rays from the now nearby black tanks.  Tam began to swear furiously under his breath.

          The turret of one armoured car slowly turned to face an approaching black tank, and the gun fired.  The two-pounder gun was similar to that used by the Doctor to destroy the unmanned Sentinel and it shattered the black tank apart in a cloud of black glass fragments, followed by streaks of flashing light as tracer bullets smashed into the remainders.  Nothing moved in the acre of brittle shards left behind.

          ‘Nice one!’ exulted Tam. ‘That’s the stuff to give ‘em.’

     Ah, Tam, just wait.

Daimler AC

The Haul

Conrad has to confess he did a little book shopping on Christmas Eve, purely for my greedy selfish self and nobody else.  Art!

     From top port: "Battle Of The Atlantic" by Bernard Ireland.  The author's name sounds familiar, I may have another of his works in the book mountain.  The battle of the Atlantic was the only thing that truly worried Churchill, because This Sceptred Isle could NOT afford to lose it, or even draw it.

     'Sapper', for your information, is the creator of the character 'Bulldog Drummond', and that's the extent of my knowledge about him.  Or even her.  I shall have to go off and Google and remedy my ignorance.

     "Machine Gunner" is an account of the Machine Gun Corps, who were formed in 1915 and disbanded the second the First Unpleasantness ended.  There is a bronze statue erected <ahem> in their memory which I cannot post as it's a full-size nude male.  Use your filthy imaginations!

     "The Art Of War" is from China circa 500 BC.  Note that it makes no claim to be the version by Sun Tzu.  It will make interesting reading, as the publication date is about the time Han China came into conflict with Koryo Korea.

Finally -

Watched an incredibly gory Christmas film called 'Violent Night' yesterday, which lived up to it's name after the first 20 minutes.  Starring the mighty David Harbour and the ever-excellent John Leguizamo.  NSFW or children.  Art!