Nikmetopopolis

This One Veers About A Bit, So Be Warned

It's Also Rather Grim

Okay!  Were I to mention "Potemkin" your fevered mind would immediately dart to that warship 'Potemkin', which features in the outstanding film by the Sinister-yet-talented film director Sergei Eisenstein and his film "Battleship Potemkin".  You are probably only aware of one scene in the film.  Art!

Direct inspiration for "The Untouchables"

     In this scene, the eeeevil Tsarist soldiers massacre the protesting Odessans on the city steps, which I won't comment on as we are tasteless but not that tasteless.

     The battleship was named in honour of one Grigory Potemkin, a big wheel in the court and army of Catherine The Great, who conquered lands that had belonged to the Ottomans, and whom - it says here - "peacefully coughcoughannexed" Crimea.  Not merely a conqueror, he also established towns that are now cities we have heard about of late: Kherson, Nikolaiev - now Mykolaiv as the Ukrainians style it - Sevastopol and Ekaterinoslav - now Dnipro.  Art!

Grig and Cat

     Despite being an accomplished soldier, statesman and diplomat, what people best remember him for are the 'Potemkin Villages' he established in order to supposedly impress Ol' Cat when she went a-visiting.  These were shams constructed to give the impression of wealth, prosperity and a happy peasantry.

     Here an aside.  The Ruffians are doing exactly the same in Mariupol at present.  They have thrown up apartment blocks and advertise them in television presentations that are carefully angled and shot to exclude the bombed-out shell of the city they stand in.  Art!

All very depressing

     Ironically enough, another dictatorial regime sought to create an artificially-enhanced 'reality' to make manure look like meringue.  We speak, of course - obviously! - of the Nazis, and their temporary 'model concentration camp' at Theresienstadt.  The Danish and Swiss Red Cross had been making noises of increasing volume about inspecting the Danish prisoners in this camp, and the RSHA (who were responsible for maintaining them) were very, very reluctantly prodded into allowing a visit in June of 1944.  Art!

     Everything was prettified for the visit, there was a football match and a children's opera, things were painted, flowers were planted, and immediately after the Red Cross departed everyone was sent off to Auschwitz.

     Moving from the awful to the inane, we now skip forward in time again, to the time of the Sinister Union.  In order to confound and confuse and contradict The Evil West Especially South Canada, the Sinisters used to hide the nature of their military production lines, by titling them as "Tractor Construction Combine 23" or  "Uralmash Washing Machine And Television Assembly Plant (Only Five Year Wait!)".  There's an old Sinister-era joke about a man in an industrial factory who tries to smuggle home all the parts to make a sewing-machine, which is what the factory makes.  Except every time he puts it together, he makes a machine gun.  Art!  This is what you might call an anti-Potemkin institution, or even a Nikmetop institution.  Art!

     This enormous explosion took place at a factory supposedly making 'Optical systems' for the military.  As you can see from the lower photos, the place has been utterly obliterated, with at least one dead, five in critical condition and over fifty more injured.  People initially said it was an Ukrainian drone, which is nonsense, as the amount of damage would need a wave of multi-ton drones carrying enormous warheads.  O and look what someone found next to their car.  Art!

     Hmmmm it looks like old Sinister habits die hard.  This factory was obviously either storing or producing artillery shells and that diehard smoker Igor Jenkins had been posted there.  The official Ruffian explanation?  "They were fireworks".  Residents of Moscow and satellite towns must be uneasily looking at local factories and wondering if, or how many, 'fireworks' are being stored there.  And if that is the case, whether the Ukrainians know about them, too.

     O what it is to live in interesting times! - as an old Scottish curse goes.

Finally!

No, this is not the usual Coda that appears at the end of a blog.  What I mean, obviously - of course! - is that I have, at long last, finished "Jonathan Strange And Mister Norrell".  Yes, it was entertaining and amusing, but it was also FAR TOO LONG and could have easily been edited down to 500 pages without losing anything much.  It's going back to a charity shop, probably this weekend.  Art!

A television series?  Who knew!

Also Finally -

Nope, still not the end.  What I refer to, obviously - of course! - is that trade paperback I got at the weekend, "The Darkest Judge", which has finally gone down the route of "Marvel Zombies".  What they've done is come up with an excuse to parade around a whole host of popular "2000AD" characters either as zombies or fighting off the zombie hordes.  Art!

     I recognise Rogue Trooper, Kano, a Nort trooper, a Krool, Tharg (!), Ace, a Sov Judge, a Geek and the V.Cs.  Art!

    A bit of duplication here.  There's a Harlem Hero, Sam 'Robohunter' Slade, Meltdown Man, DR and Quinch, Kano and Rogue again, Middenhead McNulty, Ro-Jaws - though how a robot can also be a zombie is rather beyond me - Torquemada, Wulf and Ukko.  Plus a few I don't recognise that probably got printed after I left the readership.  Art!

     A bit of coincidence, this one - here the Psi-Judges are getting mentally melted by none other than Wolfie Smith, whom we referred to recently.  Quite how he can still manage his ESP with a brain made out of necrotic slime is one for the writer to explain.

The Witter On Twitter

It came out yesteryon that "Happy" Jack Smith's investigation into Agent Orange had sequestered all his Twitter data, and both Conrad and media commentators were puzzled as to why this was so.

     Well, on MSNBC this morning, a legal journalist explained that the background data that is time-and-datestamped onto Tweets will permit the investigators to locate them in both time and space, thus being able to pinpoint exactly who sent what, and when, and from where, and to whom.  Thus Citizen Trump cannot argue 'O it was one of my lowly minions who exhorted my MAGA devotees to storm the FBI headquarters and only leave when every agent's head was on a spike".

     A Quoran also explained that Twitter has a direct message function, so any supposedly private Tweets Agent Orange sent, as well as any drafts, will be recoverable.  Art!

Go on, Don, tell us how enjoyable and exciting an indictment is!

"City In The Sky"

Ace is getting a tour of Arcology One, and now comes across how some of the Wardens spend their leisure time.

     In stark contrast, the other half of the room consisted of low couches, low tables, computer stations and wall-hangings, separated from the boisterous event by a thick curtain of transparent plastic.  The chill-out section, of course –

     - a whistle blew, coming from the third person on the mats, the dancing non-combatant, and Ace realised that she was the referee.  Both fighters stood and bowed to each other, and the meeting dissolved into laughter as people split up to go and punish themselves on exercise bikes or weight machines.

     One of the fighters, a stocky, dark-skinned woman with close-cropped hair, came towards Nat and Ace, heading for the exit, then stopped to look at the young traveller.

     ‘Who’s this?’ she asked. 

     ‘Ace.  A sight-seeing visitor from Downstairs.  Ace, this is Veronika.  Look after her for a minute, will you?  I need to post information to Tab about her and the Doctor or they’ll get bothered endlessly.’

     The new introduction waved Nat away and looked back at Ace again.

     ‘So – you lot are the law around here?’ asked Ace, to break the conversational silence.  Veronika frowned.

     ‘We administer the Charter, if that’s what you mean.   We lead in physiotherapy, diet and exercise advice and training.’

     ‘Diet!’ said Ace, surprised.  ‘Diet police?’

     Ah, the wave of the future!

Finally -

Yes, this really is the last item.  And it's entirely apposite, because it's life imitating art.  Art!

     Obviously the whole farrago was directly inspired by Conrad's fan-fiction and I should probably sue for royalties.  On the other hand, Virgin probably have lots of hungry barristers on a retainer looking to beat the legal spoons out of anyone they consider defaming the business or Ol' Rick.