An Infinity Of Conrads!

Yes, I Thought That Would Catch Your Attention

Imagine that, a world populated entirely by Conrads.  Actually, I think Brian Aldiss wrote a sci-fi short story along similar lines, and Philip K. Dick did another short story on an even more horrifying basis.

     Of course - obviously! - it will never happen <sad face> but a man can always dream <musing face> especially if he gets to ban both musicals and the ballfoot game <happy face>.  Art!

Nothing to do with the story, here only because it mentions Ol' Bri

     Hmmmm after whole seconds of diligent research, I find that the Aldiss story is "Let's Be Frank", which was surprisingly easy, due to my remembrance of a line "One manifestation of Frank did not care to see another manifestation of Frank acting" which, you cannot but admit, isn't bad for a story I read once over forty years ago*.  

A woman!  ha!  Gotcha!

The PKD story?  If I recall correctly, it was about a boyfriend who tries to resurrect his dead ex, by propitiating certain Greek mythological characters with a bathful of blood.  Aha!  "Upon The Dull Earth".  Inevitably, because this is PKD we're talking about, things go disastrously wrong**.  The inept bo

     ANYWAY we are back to me squeeeeezing the very last bits of content out of Yayoi's Balloonaticsculptures exhibition "You, Me, And The Balloons".  Conrad wondered why there was a line of people up against a wall of the Aviva centre, and being naturally nosy, over I went to investigate.  Art!

     They were queueing up for "Dots Obsession", which took fifteen minutes, that Your Humble Scribe occupied by taking another photograph of the Giant Purplish Tentacles.  Art!

     Thanks to the fabric's transparency and the internal lighting, you can see how the balloons are made, from tinted individual pieces (presumably) glued together to form an individual portion of the overall structure.  As you can tell by the way they overlay the joints, the polka dots are added after assembly, again (presumably) after inflation so they don't suffer expansion stress.  O the practical problems of being a balloon sculptor!

     ANYWAY, back to "Dots Obsession", which was curated and timed by a female staff member outside, whom Conrad mistook for French, and greeted with 'Bonjour'.  She rapidly corrected me that she was, in fact, Mexican; my first Manc Mexican.  Duration of a visit inside was timed at 60 seconds, because there were so many people waiting.  Art!

     I also took a video but am unsure if it will load and play thanks to size.  Let's give it the old college try.  Tra!

     Now that I think about it, there was another sci-fi short story about unparalleled replication of a single person, though I can't remember the author.  Someone like William Tenn or Lloyd Biggle Jr.

     Aha!  It was "Double Double Toil And Trouble" by Holley Cantine.  In it, an amateur musician finds that the only magical spell they can make work is a 'Doubling' spell, which they then VERY UNWISELY use to duplicate themselves, to form a band.  Unfortunately some of the duplicates duplicate themselves, which create character flaws, and one of them decides to take over the world.  It ends somewhat abiguously but not well at all.  Art!

     Well that transitioned rather severely.  Time, I think, to move on.

O Lawd

The media have been buzzing with That Gumshot of Donald Buck since early Friday morning, as he and his 17 other co-indictors made their painful way to Fulton County Court in Georgia, South Canada.  There is quite an array of different styles of gumshot on display, with some, indeed, baring their gums in ill-advised attempts to portray arrest as a rather fun diversion before the weekend.  Art!

     Most of these are unknowns.  You can see that Donald is probably the angriest of them all, because of How Dare You Peons Treat Me Like A Criminal, and in his own re-posting of this gumshot, he's had the Sherrif's badge edited out, because that would be a bad look for him.  Giuliani looks utterly miserable and must be wondering how he got here.  The grinning one next to him is Jenna Ellis, who seems to have spent less time on her hair than Donald did.  But she probably doesn't have a large bald spot to cover up.  At far st

     ANYWAY I would like to acknowledge Farron Cousins for an incidental detail about this lot.  We here at BOOJUM! guestimated that it would cost at least $26,000 dollars for these folk to get legal representation.  Farron, who has worked in the Florida legal system for 17 years, came up with a far larger total for good legal counsel.  Art!

A near shot of Farron

     As he admits himself, he's not a lawyer.  But he works with them and the knowledge rubs off.  His total for the 18 above and their legal fees?

     $1,000,000 each.

     Only a few of them have that kind of moolah.  Meadows and Eastman for sure.  The others?  Ellis has been trying to crowd-fund her defence and so far has $5,600, which might get her one hour's representation.  Donald, deeply devoted as he is to himself and his money, ain't paying a red cent to any of them, probably on the grounds that their plot failed so he doesn't owe them anything.

     Hmmmm well that leaves them with the option of doing a deal with the prosecution.

     Gosh, isn't the South Canadian judicial system interesting!

The Law Of Unintended Consequences

As you may recall, when the grain deal with Ruffia ended, they tried to destroy the Ukrainian's grain storage and movement infrastructure.  The idea was, once the Ukes were unable to move grain, the Ruffians would generously agree to the deal going forward again.  Art!

     The Ukes had other ideas.  

     Above you can see the damage meted out to the Ruffian tanker "Sig", which is now in dry dock.  This attack, along with that on the Ruffian warship whose name is too bothersome to  pronounce, has had an instant 'chilling' effect on Ruffian marine transport in the Black Sea.  Over the past week only one oil tanker has sailed from a Ruffian Black Sea port, which imposes another choke point on Ruffian trade.  Kazakhstan, which exports it's oil via the Ruffian ports, is beginning to look nervous and wonders how much an overland pipeline to China might cost?  Art!

     One bets the Puffy-Phaced Petroleum Pimp didn't see that one coming. TLOUC indeed.

Possibly The Dirtiest Sport Bar The 'Tough Mudder'

It being the August Bank Holiday weekend, this Sunday will see the annual Bog Snorkelling Championships take place at the tiny Welsh town of Llanwytryd Wells.  We have covered this event in the past; all an entrant needs is a pair of flippers, a mask, snorkel and the £20 entrance fee.  An aversion to dirt, mud, weeds and reeds won't help.  Art!

     It is cold, wet, dark and dirty, but every entrant is cheered on by the crowds and it's kudos is such that it has entrants from across the globe.  Currently the record for snorkelling the 120 yards is 1 minute 18 seconds.  Do you think you cn do better?

"City In The Sky"

Davros is telling the tale of woe about how the Big Crash ended, which is to say, very badly indeed.

     Naturally both travellers were both interested.  Davros quailed under their scrutiny.

     ‘Where to begin?  Okay, spare me a second, please, I’ve not had to explain this in detail to anyone before.’

     He began.  After the appalling destruction of the war Downstairs began to diminish, not to fully cease for another five months, the orbital arcologies had come to a mutual agreement about co-operation (except for the Chinese sphere, which sent out a threatening looped broadcast for a week before stopping).  The combined efforts of the spheres had created a mine on the Moon, where they extracted metal ores: iron, aluminium and titanium.  Water-ice harvested from shadowed craters had helped them to boost their length of survival, being split to provide oxygen, or used in irrigation.  The Arc had been the leaders with a rocket vehicle called “Pangolin” that had been designed to land and take off from the Moon.  The mine itself was a large structure built from “lunakrete”, the lunar regolith mixed with water from that same versatile ice, to produce structural bricks that were bonded together with more lunakrete.  An internal, inflatable, triple-layered plastic bubble provided a breathable atmosphere, and the sun provided endless free solar power to fire the smelters and furnaces.

       I bet The Doctor's impressed with this display of human ingenuity.

Finally -

I have mentioned it on Facebook, yet not here so far.  The tracking algorithm on Blogger has once again gone completely potty.  I hope.  Art!

     Yesterday's traffic alone is about half a normal monthly total.  Yes yes yes, it may be flattering but is it real?

*  The story is told in retrospective by a Venusian, as the Frank Exploratory Spaceship has just landed on that planet.

** Everyone on the planet turns into Sylvia, the dead ex.  Ooops.