I Know What You're Thinking -
Because you're predictable and Conrad is clever. Or sly and well-informed, which is close enough.
ANYWAY what I refer to is a film that I've never seen, but which was highly influential for decades afterwards, and I'm willing to bet that you've not seen it either, because it's both black-and-white and silent. Not only that, it came out in 1925, almost a century ago. Art!
Perhaps I should have put the title in quotation marks, because not doing so
The film is a Hollywood production, yet not typical of the kind of gung-ho guff they often came out with, and is well-regarded as showing the realities of the First Unpleasantness, as much as was possible at the time. Art!
The glory and splendour of martial endeavour
Despite the Brodie pattern helmets, these are South Canadians, as you can tell from their M1917 Enfield rifles.
Interestingly, the whole thing is available for free on Youtube, doubtless out of copyright and now in the public domain thanks to it's age.
"Why haven't you watched it yet, O Moustachioed Myrmidon?" I hear you query, and pausing only to congratulate you on your vocabulary*, it's because it's two-and-a-half hours long and Your Humble Scribe is only getting back home at 18:30 if he's lucky. We have a Bank Holiday soon, for some reason, so I may gainfully employ myself during the day. Art!
That's quite a shot, because don't forget, no CGI. It may be camera trickery, I shall have to investigate further.
ANYWAY as you may be aware after someone vandalised the Kremlin recently, the Ruffians like to throw a big parade on May 9th, puffing up their chests at how they single-handedly won the Second Unpleasantness - avoiding any mention of helping the Nazis invade Poland at the war's start - although in 2022 there was no display of air power, for no good reason as there were sunny blue skies and no clouds. Nor was there a single mention of the Stupid Military Operation, which had begun to go spectacularly wrong at that point. Art!
These nice shiny tanks and nice shiny soldiers belong to two show-pony divisions that do nothing but rehearse for parades all year long.
Those Ruffians thirsting for a glimpse of their nice shiny tanks are in for a disappointment this year; the whole thing is closed to the public. Not so much for fears of Ukrainians with sniper rifles or kamikaze drones, but for an event dubbed "The Immortal Regiment". This was where members of the public went walking across Red Square holding photographs of those who died in the Great Patriotic War, except the Kremlin's fear was that this year the photos would be of casualties from the invasion of Ukraine. Not only would the optics be bad, it might give people an impression of just how much sunflower-fodder the Ruffians have lost in the Special Idiotic Operation.
Ooops.
Then, too, the provinces are scaling-back their Victory Parade celebrations, making them virtual if possible, because if the sheeple get together and compare notes, it would be bad. Very bad. Art!
Rumour has it that The Pest In A Bulletproof Vest has given orders that the tortured pile of rubble that is Bakhmut has to be captured by 8th May, so it can be sold as a mighty victory equal to the storming of the Reichstag in Berlin. Frankly, this is a bit dubious, given the zipped lips about the Special Military Abberation in 2022.
Truly, we live in interesting times.
Motley, rustle up the Guard Hog** and the Hard Hog** and well have a Pig Parade of our own!
Bitten By The Coincidence Hydra AGAIN
To no event, Conrad does have his armoured underwear after all, so his delicate nethers are protected. There I was, reading 'Fire And Fury', when who pops up on page 240 but Oleg Deripaska. Art!
Ol' Oleg
I shall have to telescope the facts a little. It seems that a character called Paul Manafort, a political consultant who lobbied fervently for the dirtiest of dictators - hey a dollar is a dollar! - was at one point doing lots of big business with Ol' Oleg. Manafort, after multiple charges were laid against him, was sentenced to 43 months in prison. He got a pardon from Prez Trump, which he accepted, which in South Canadian law means he admitted his guilt.
Well, Ol' Oleg had a $17 million claim against Manafort after their business dealings went sour. How thoroughly unexpected, a dishonest politician double-crossing a dirty financier! Art!
 |
| You don't scare me. |
Old But Gold
The BBC had an interesting sidebar item about retro-technology in Ukraine. As you may be aware, modern armies use extensive communications networks, with radios, encrypted mobiles, satellites and fibre-optic cables. The latter is not really suitable for trench warfare on the front lines as it would have to be buried at least two metres deep to avoid being cut by artillery fire - just as signal wires in the First Unpleasantness required - and you'd need miles of it running from the front lines to the rear. Nor is it suitable for short-range comms. The other comms systems can all be eavesdropped by an opposition with suitable advanced technology. Art!
This is one of the Ukes using an old dialling phone to communicate to nearby troops. The technology is a century old but it cannot be eavesdropped, which is reason enough to use it. For an outgoing call one needs to crank the handle - Art!
The only way for the Ruffians to pick up the signal would be to physically splice another cable into the Ukrainian one, and eavesdrop that way. Not gunna happen, as Darling Daughter says.
"The Sea Of Sand"
The Doctor is back on Earth, trying to juggle the juggernaut march of history and deal with the bio-vore invasion simultaneously.
The bio-vores responsible for
shooting at him on a reflex and thus inaccurately, stopped when they realised
that the small alien, Thedoctor, the one who ought to have been killed a dozen times
over, had returned.
Being
frog-marched by creatures many times more powerful than he meant the Doctor went when they wanted, not
where he wished. He ended up in one of
the three smaller buildings dedicated to scientific purposes, facing an unfamiliar
bio-vore.
‘Detachment
Leader, we captured this alien on the trans-mat platform. He demanded to be brought here,’ announced
one of the escorts. Tellingly, he
remained facing the Detachment Leader, and did not exhibit any trace of
respect. The Doctor recognised these as
two symptoms of a lesser daring to indirectly threaten a superior. There must have been endless killings amongst
the command levels here!
‘Just
a warning!’ exclaimed the Doctor, brightly and with considerable
enthusiasm. All eyes were upon him. ‘Yes, just to say that the trans-mat on
Homeworld is now under the control of Farmers.
In - ’ and he checked his half-hunter ‘ – about five minutes from now,
they will be accepting their last ever transmission from here on Target
Seventeen, back to Homeworld.’
O I say, how sneakily well-played, Doctor!
Of Work
Conrad only discovered today that he has two fifteen-minute unpaid breaks during the working day, so he's been putting in half-an-hour extra as of Tuesday and Wednesday. At least it makes the burden of work a little less extreme. Art!
This has been sat on a shelf for years without being used. Well now it's come into it's own, after getting accumulated grease and dust washed off. It manages to fit a panini roll very nicely, thank you very much, and quite a bit of other stuff, being surprisingly roomy. The only problem is that if the carrier bag it dwells within hits your knee, you know about it
<said Conrad the massive coward - the horrid truth courtesy Mister Hand!>
DOG BUNS! Curse you, you treacherous appendage!
Thank you and goodnight.
* You can't take any credit, it's all from reading BOOJUM!
** Relicts from the very earliest days of the blog.
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