A Song Of Pyre And Ice

Good Afternoon!

Okay, rather than exploit Ol' Tolky, today we shamelessly append a George R R Martin pun in order to appeal to the "Game Of Thrones" audience, which also means we can add in a picture to deceive them even more.  Art!

     Filmed on location in Iceland.  Honestly.

     Okay, having baited you in here, I shall now wickedly switch to this Intro's real focus: my annotations from "Inside Russia" about another bottleneck in the Ruffian economy identified by Big K, to wit:

OIL AND REFINERIES: Modern-day Ruffia has been tellingly and cuttingly described as "A gas station masquerading as a country" which is but one cut above "Upper Volta with nuclear missiles" as wags in the Nineties had it.

     Crude oil is Ruffia's primary export, this being the stuff as it comes out of the ground.  Currently there is a lack of refined petroleum products in Ruffia, such as petrol, fuel oil and kerosene.  Quite ironic as over the past 20 years dozens of immense refineries were built in Ruffia in order to create end products, as these are where the biggest profit margins are.  Art!

Intact oil refinery

As we have informed before, the entirety of Ruffian refining was bought-in from the West, as their Sinister-era 'refineries' were more accurately simple storage sites with little ability to refine.  One thing they did produce was 'Mazut', a very low-grade diesel, which we've recently mentioned as it's what fuelled the "Admiral Kuznetsov", when it made one of it's risky journeys out to sea.  Art!

Visible over the horizon

     Yes, it kept catching fire.  No, that is not the 'Pyre' of today's title.

     Big K then related a tale of when his employers were involved with negotiations in Spain to build energy plant, which gave him a bit of an insight into oil refining.  You need an enormous number of licences to run the enormous number of processes that occur in a refinery, all of which were held by South Canadian companies <tee hee!>.

     Big K also had considerable trouble with the phrase "Catalytic Cracking Facilities", which he could render easily enough in Ruffian; he got there in the end.  This is an example of a process involved in refining crude.  Art!

CCF

The elephant in the lounge, or the TARDIS in the tearoom, is time.  Oil refineries are - as you can plainly see above - extremely complex facilites, which are costly to run because they require endless maintenance, servicing and repair.  None of which is happening thanks to sanctions.  After 23 months  breakdowns are starting to occur.  Two large refineries in Nizhny Novgorod and Volgograd have ceased operations because of breakdowns.  Petrol - one of those refined products mentioned - is now increasing in price and Konstantin expects shortages after the election.  Sorry - 'election'.

     "But what about the p -"

     PATIENCE!

     We're getting there.

     Big K explained that he'd counted 16 major attacks by Mysterious Unattributed Drones on Ruffian oil refineries.  These began in mid-2022 near Rostov-on-Don  (Konstantin's old home town).  Conrad thinks this omits the last 2 drone strikes, so it's possibly up to 18, with attacks now occurring every few days.  Art!

     These strikes are, of course - obviously! - never mentioned on Ruffian state television and are described elsewhere as 'small fires'.  This is immediately recognised as arrant nonsense by any locals, who can see a pillar of smoke rising a mile high over a sea of flames.  Art!

     This is the export terminal at Ust-Luga, near Saint Petersburg, which has been shut down thanks to damage.  It's one of the two main Ruffian export terminals, which had cut exports to 83% of normal, and which might now be reduced to 41.5%.  Not only that, the fires were extinguished by fire crews using water, in the dead of winter, with the result that everything is covered in inches-deep ice.  One presumes they should have used foam, except they didn't have any because foam fire-fighting technology is expensive.

     The thing is, all these Ruffian petroleum sites are inherently flammable and explosive, meaning the Ukes can hit them at any point on-site and be guaranteed a result.  

     Rumour has it that the managers of these facilities have been told that there simply aren't anti-aircraft weapons enough to guard their refineries and, if they want any SAMs or radar or ECM, they'll have to purchase them.  A song of buyer and ice?

That Interview

You know the one I mean.  Conrad saw it hilariously described on Twitter as "An angry little man shouting at a clown for two hours".  I admit I added in the 'little'.  If the cap fits - or the trousers, in this case, I think there'd been a death in his family as they were at half-mast.  Art!

Right, this picture earns me 5 years in the gulag

"Doctor Strange"

Conrad's had this sitting on his shelf for months, and I am now 1:14:40 in.  Just for shizzles, I looked it up on Box Office Mojo and IMDB.  It was a fair success.

BUDGET                                    $165 million

PROMO & ADVERTISING           $100 million (estimated)

DISTRIBUTION                         Nil - Marvel Studios thus distributed by Disney

DOMESTIC BOX OFFICE            $$133 million

INTERNATIONAL BOX OFFICE  $445 million

GLOBAL TOTAL                         $678 million

NET PROFIT (50% RETURN)    $75 million

IMDB RATING                          7.5 (on a ten scale)

"Talk to the hand"

     I can guess that The Critical Drinker disliked it because of it's showy spectacle, and that "The Ancient One" is played by a woman, except it's Tilda Swinton looking totally androgynous thanks to being shaved bald as an egg.

     Talking of TCD, I did watch and annotate a short vlog he did on Why Modern Films Are So Expensive, which means, sooner or later, you're going to get the benefit, too.  You lucky people.

"City In The Sky"

New Eucla has just been hit by a small tsunami, leaving the streets ankle-deep in seawater.  What else is going to be added to the mix?

The umbrella handle tugged him back into the road where the waters were now pooling and settling, leaving lumps of flotsam in ragged heaps.  The biggest ragged heap turned out to be the fire-engine.  It’s tarpaulin cover protected the engine from being clogged by the wave and was now covered in mud, sand, twigs and branches of varying size – and a dead fish.  Habit and ingrained practice almost made Billy pick up the fish to put aside as food.

     Bang! and he jumped, ducking down behind the fire engine.

     ‘Don’t worry, only thunder,’ said Doctor Smith, wetting a finger and testing wind direction.  Billy looked up at the skies, now lowering with grim clouds plainly bursting with rain.  ‘Hmm.  Instant tropical storm, I shouldn’t wonder.’  He looked down at Billy and grinned apologetically.  ‘Sorry.  Making weather on the hoof like this is an  art, not a science.’

     Another rumble came from the south, preceded by a faint flash of lightning.

     Bang! and this time the Doctor ducked down alongside Billy.

     ‘That was a shotgun.  The Lithoi have arrived.’        

     Let (unequal) battle commence.

Seeing Red

In a good way.  Conrad understands that there is an annual Lego competition that goes by the name "Lego Ideas", where aspiring builders submit ideas to the Danes about new kits.  These are put to a collective public vote, and the winner gets their design issued as a Lego kit.  Art!

     This is John Cramp, who finally succeeded in creating a kit that got approved: a red London telephone box, which is great because these things are going to be rendered extinct by mobile phones.  Art!

     Conrad unsure how much it costs.  Doubtless it will go down great with tourists who can't take the real thing back home.

     Erk.  £100 a pop.  Good luck with that, O tourists, Conrad will stick with his mobile, thanks very much.

Finally -

The radioactive fogs have rolled away, and the acidic rains are holding off for the moment, so Conrad is going to risk donning his Hazmat suit and strolling nonchalantly into Lesser Sodom to buy a cauliflower.  Just to keep you informed.