If I Were To Say "Invincible!"

Then You Could Be Forgiven For Being Mistaken

For it is perfectly reasonable to think I refer to Robert Kirkman's comics character, as I've whanged on about him enough, and have all 22 issues of "Invincible".  There is also an animated series, which is on Amazon, so I've never seen it.  Conrad wonders if it's quite as violent as the comics themselves, which regularly featured explosive gore.  Art!

     The comics, as I've mentioned before, start off as quite light and frothy, before becoming rather darker, and more space-opera is included.  There are a fair few volumes set in the same universe, such as "Best Tiger", a chap so handy with guns that he deliberately blindfolds himself to make things more challenging.  Art!

     Then there's "Rex Plode", who can - you may be ahead of me here - make things explode.  Bit of a minor character, he was lucky to get his own stand-alone volume.  He w

     ANYWAY by now you must realise that we're not talking about Mark Greyson - Invincible's normal persona - but rather about - 

     AIRCRAFT CARRIERS!

     What, you were expecting a Superman parody?  Not at all.  Art!

     There you go, 'HMS Invincible' to starboard.  Note her tonnage and overall length compared to the other vessels.  This is because she was designed initially as a cruiser, a design later modified to be a 'light' aircraft carrier, as if anything that weighs as much as twenty-three thousand elephants can be blessed with that moniker.  The Invincible and her sister ship the 'Illustrious' took part in the Falklands War back in 1982, and the war in Bosnia in 1994, and the invasion of Iraq in 2003, before the grand old lady was broken up in 2011.

     Still, what you might call a full life for a vessel.

     I shan't bother with the 'De Gaulle' - only joking!  It's the only nuclear-powered aircraft carrier beyond the South Canadian Navy, and has been on operations in the Indian Ocean in support of actions in Afghanistan, in the Med during the Libyan uprising against Gadaffi and against ISIS in Iraq in 2015.  Art!

Prickly as a porcupine

     Here an aside.  There wasn't much in this world that Deggy was fond of.  The exception was his wife, Yvonne.  She was present in his official Citroen when it was shot up in 1962 by OAS assassins, who remarkably managed to miss everyone in the convoy despite firing 187 shots.  The actual shooters were granted clemency, but Deggy refused point blank to grant mercy to the planner and plotter in charge, one Jean Bastien Thiry.  He was executed by firing squad.  Deggy was quite used to being shot at, having been a soldier, but he absolutely would not tolerate anyone putting his wife at risk.

     ANYWAY we shall skip lightly to the 'USS Nimitz', a broth of a beast almost three times the tonnage of the humble Invincible.  This is a slightly unfair comparison as the Nimitz is one of the biggest warships in the world, which has had about fifteen deployments overseas since the mid-Seventies, and is due to retire next year.  Art!

     They might also have added "Featuring the USS Nimitz", because the film was shot aboard the carrier.  So she's a film star!

     And then we have the 'Admiral Kuznetsov', occluded by a gigantic cloud of tarry black smoke, as she is in real life.  Or, I should say, 'was'.  This floating joke was commissioned in 1985, and has had exactly one operational combat deployment, to the Syrian coastline in the Med.  Her pilots were so poorly-trained that they've crashed three aircraft into the ocean.  There have been numerous fires aboard the AK, resulting in deaths, but the Ruffians are too cagey to admit how many.  It has been in dry dock for the past 6 years because there aren't the funds to renovate it, as most of them were embezzled.  Her propellers were removed to allow her into a floating dock, which promptly sank, meaning that there's no way to get the propellers back on unless she is towed all the way to Vladivostok.  The Ruffian navy doesn't want to do this because the nasty mean Royal Navy will point and laugh.  Art!

     That's the AK burning 'mazut', an incredibly crude fuel that gives off a smoke signal visible beyond the horizon.  It's cheap, so that's why, in case you were wondering.  The AK's return to service is always a year off; in 2023 it was going to be 2024.  Now that it's 2024, expect it to roll around to 2025.  It is certainly not Invincible and even less Invisible, and if a cruel UK film studio were to make a documentary about it, they would Inevitably call it "Carrier On!".

     

The Number One Brick Build

Thank you to SpitBrix for creating the list of 20, some of which I've omitted because I found them dull or repetitive.  What is Number One?  Do you know, I can't remember, it's been weeks since I played the video.  Art!

     O yes.  This is the first Lego robot to solve a 9 x 9 x 9 Rubik's Cube, and is called the Multicuber 999.  It can solve a cube in under 35 minutes, which Conrad finds impressive as he could never be bothered with them, finding them much too hard, and they tend to come apart when you throw them against a wall.  This machine uses a smartphone for colour recognition and THE BLIND FOOLS DON'T THEY KNOW THIS IS THE WAY TO SKYNET! plotting a solution.

Further To "John Carter"

Conrad has seen and enjoyed this film for what it is, unpretentious entertainment.  At the time when released in 2012, it was one of the most expensive films ever made, coming in at $250 million in production costs.  Add in another $100 for promotion and advertising - not distribution, it was a Disney film and they have their own distribution network - and you're looking at $350 million.  Art!

     Globally it only made $284 million, so, working on the studios getting (an exceedingly generous 50% of the box office) their cut, it only got back $142 million.  So it lost about $200 million.  On the other hand, it did have the biggest opening day ever in Ruffia. 

     BUT! It used to be rated as one of the biggest ever box office bombs.  Who's that saying 'Hold my beer'?

     That global box office means it - whatever 'it' is - only made back $97.5 million back for the studio.  Before I reveal the answer, the overall budget with P & A was likely $400 million, so they may have lost $300 million.  Art!

     We won't know the true state of TM's budget until their UK tax returns are filed.  

     So!  John Carter, you can hold your head up high again!

"City In The Sky"

The plot is thickening and things are astir, to push the cooking analogy a bit too much.

     Two miles distant, invisible to anyone bar those able to see into the far ultra-violet, the Lithoi’s two spare flying eyes stood on the ground east of Forrest, waiting for the escapee to arrive.

 

     Staying behind and acting as a rearguard in New Eucla would be dangerous.  The six volunteers knew this before being warned by Doctor Smith about what they faced: a flying craft that mounted very high-powered infra-red beam weapons, able to destroy the whole township in minutes. 

     Since the township had been emptied of people, the aliens might very well choose to pursue them, either across the ocean or once they reached land, and there would be an unholy slaughter if that happened. 

     ‘Your job is to buy time,’ explained the Timelord, sipping a lemonade outside The Sanctuary, having helped himself to a jugful in the larder.

     ‘And die trying?’ growled Brogan, a leathery brown livestock farmer cradling a shotgun. 

     ‘No.  Please try not to get killed,’ replied the Doctor, managing to sound flippant whilst looking with a deadly intensity at Brogan, who could only hold the gaze for a second before flinching.  ‘I said buy time, not die in a gloriously useless fashion.’

     You tell 'em, Doc!

How Serendipitous

Conrad was perusing the pages of "The Daily Beast", only to find that all the MacGuffins were readily recognisable today <sad face>.  Art!

     There was an interesting brief article from one Tristan Snell, who was responsible for successfully prosecuting Pumpkinhead and his fake "Trump University", to the tune of $25 million being paid back to ripped-off punters.  This was one of the infrequent times Donald Buck had been held accountable and punished, which loss he probably tells himself he 'won bigly'.  There was an apt line -

                 Prior to Trump University, he did indeed seem invincible. 

     Which is where we came in.  Toodles!