You Might Be A Tad Confused
After all, not everyone is as sophisticated as wot I am. You might, perhaps, confuse today's title with that rock classic by The Who, 'Baba O'Riley', possibly an alternate demo version that only completists have ever heard of and know anything about? Art!
You'd be utterly wrong, however it does give me an excuse to bring in a picture that will ensnare the passers-by.
Here an aside. I'm sure you are aware of and even have a few tales of that musical phenomenon 'Mondegreens', where people mis-hear lyrics. Conrad's version stems from The Sex Pistols 'Anarchy In The UK', where he was convinced that Johnny Rotten howled about wanting to destroy Ponsonby.
"Poor Ponsonby," I said - to myself, because already by 1977 I knew it unsettled people to hear me talking aloud to no-one - "He must represent The Establishment, you know, being a senior civil servant or similar." Art!
Tarquin Fitz-ffolkes Ponsonby
Imagine my surprise that the real lyrics are "I wanna destroy passers-by", which, to be honest, sounds more nihilistic than anarchistic. I don't think Proudhon would have ap
ANYWAY the character of Baba Yaga is straight out of Slavic folklore, even if the Ruffians try to take credit for her. She is a repellent-looking old hag, either because she's a witch or because medieval times lacked modern cosmetics, deodorants and shampoo. Art!
She flies around in a mortar - the kind you grind things up in, not the artillery weapon - and uses a pestle as a weapon. Don't worry, air traffic control didn't exist in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for a reason, although she might need to consider bird-strike. No! This is when an airframe flies into a flock of birds and suffers damage due to impact. What, you thought the starlings had a trade union? No, although the collective noun for a group of terns is a committee, which y
ANYWAY we come to Baba Yaga's singular domicile, a hut that stands insecurely on chicken legs, so insecurely that it can't decide which way to fall down and so stays upright. Art!
Of course, none of this has anything to do with what I really wanted to discuss in this Intro, which was the Norwegian Draugen Oil Platform, that I just so happened to come across at random yesteryon to illustrate a financial point. Art!
The Draugen Field is in the south of the Norwegian Sea, being discovered in 1984 and first drilled in 1993. The volume of oil pumped out was greatest in 2003 and the volume has been declining since, leading to questions about the platform's future. After all, is has been around for 30 years. It stands in waters 250 metres deep on a single concrete pedestal. Art!
This, like an iceberg, is only the part you can see; the rest goes down to the seabed, where oil is stored at the base of the stack, being pumped out to a nearby floating buoy, from which tankers can upload the fuel. Art!
 |
| Norway's flying mortar equivalent? |
I haven't been able to find any film of this monster either under construction or transportation, and don't have the luxury of time to poke around teh Interwebz tonight, so I may have a shot tomorrow. I would guess it would have been transported horizontally in a cradle since it's so freaking massive. Art!
Re-using yesteryon's picture.
This is the only picture I can find of the floating buoy, and a monster it is in it's own right. If you want boring facts about how high and how heavy and how many people then you go and Google for them, because I'm done here.
Motley! Let us examine the phenomena of an 'oil bath'.
"Fire And Fury" By Michael Wolff
Lest ye be unaware, this work by an acclaimed journalist covers what he intended to be the first hundred days of the Trump administration, and which ended up covering over two hundred. Wolff interviewed Prez Trump himself, lots of his senior staff, and lots of people the senior staff spoke to.
I've not finished it yet but wanted to bring up a point or two. Art!
At a few months into the Trump administration, the sacking of FBI Director Michael Comey had come back to bite the administration on the bottom, and they didn't possess Conrad's armoured underwear. Then, too, the Mueller probe into Ruffian collusion was also rolling onward.
Steve Bannon, one of the eminence grise behind Trump, decided that what the West Wing needed was another, completely separate legal team, who would deal with the Comey-Mueller stuff and leave the incumbent team to work on behalf of Prez Trump.
Trouble was, none of the reputable law firms wanted Trump's business; as Wolff puts it "All of them were afraid they would face a rebellion amongst the younger staff if they represented Trump, afraid Trump would publicly humiliate them if the going got rough, and afraid Trump would stiff them for the bill." Art!
Steve Bannon. He took fashion tips from Conrad.
Bear in mind this was only a few months into the new administration, and that NINE law firms rejected doing any business with Trump.
Pour Me A Glass Of Refreshing Schadenfreude!
I promise to stop posting from the BBC's 'Have Your Say' Comments, at some point soon. Conrad is just enjoying the venom and vitriol that pours forth between the fans posting comments. Let's have an example.
This is an old conspiracy trope in the ballfoot game, one side alleging that the other side had 'bought' the referee, a chap who really cannot do right for doing wrong. Any evidence of this bribery and corruption? Of course not! That would spoil the speculation, wouldn't it? Bring on another!
Art!
Pongo. B&W, so it must be an old photo
Scenic Backdrop With Smoke Plume
Hmmmm, well someone is giving the occupied Crimea a hot time. Another Ruffian oil storage depot has been hit and is burning, near the Kerch Bridge. Art!
The air in Krim can't be too healthy to breathe any longer, so much for it being a nice healthy tourist resort. I wonder, just who could be responsible*?
"The Sea Of Sand"
The Doctor is up against the clock, even if he has got back to Earth he is facing the inevitable march of historic events that cannot be interfered with too much for fear of altering the future.
Back went the TARDIS. As expected, the second sting didn’t capture
many Warriors, only a dozen. Back went
the TARDIS. The Doctor relocated the
time-machine off to one side of the trans-mat, down on the desert floor and
away from harm or attention.
This
time, and after waiting for long enough to complete another chapter of “The
Yawning Heights”, the Doctor dared to
open the doors of his spaceship, having taken a peek beyond on the scanner and
seen that nobody was lying in wait.
‘Ah,
the fresh air of a desert dawn!’ he enthused to the Infiltration Complex. Indeed, the air had a calm, cool quality that
only existed at dawn and dusk, and the sun had not yet risen high enough to
begin it’s relentless solar assault.
He
cast glances to left and right, seeing running bio-vores, those familiar black
tanks chugging slowly over the complex floor, and the Headquarters building
burnt and battered, great chunks of masonry blasted out of the massed
pylons. A twisted, contorted pile of
metal and wooden framework lay further inside the colonnaded building.
‘I
suspect a posthumous award is in the reckoning,’ mused the Time Lord to
himself. A glass shard went whining past
his nose, causing him to jerk back and pay attention to matters closer at hand.
‘Take
me to your leader!’ he called, biting his cheek at the use of the old
science-fiction cliché.
O Doctor. You pain me.
* Igor Jenkins, well-know and widely-travelled Ruffian solder.
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