Otherwise, "Look At Me Being Clever!"
My reason for editing the old saw "Castles In Spain" is because there's a rationale behind it, which we may get to if I can crank out this scrivel fast enough. Conrad needs to type fast enough to overcome your suspension of disbelief as you peruse the prose. Art!
A castle in Spain. Don't ask me which one.
I realise I'm going to have to define this phrase, which also comes in the atmospheric variant of "Castles In The Air", and since castles are peculiarly solid constructions massing many thousands of tons, I can't do any better than revert to the old "Starry Trex" for an example. Art!
Not a single railing to be seen
"CIS" and "CITA" are defined in my copy of Brewer's as: "A visionary project or daydream", or an intangible object that may or may not exist, and on balance probably doesn't, and if it does it's way way less impressive or important than one imagines.
"Where are you going with this?" I hear you quibble querulously, and that person at the back is making drinking gestures. May Hob damn thee charcoal, sir, April is a sober month for Conrad! So glad you asked, though.
You see, we are returning once again to that fruitful source of blog content over the past few days, "The Stand" by Ol' Steve. The title's a bit of a misnomer, most of the characters end up doing very little standing around. Why, Larry, Joe and Nadine have made it from Maine to Vermont on motorbikes. Art!
No, this is Harry and Frannie. Just to keep you guessing.
You see, Conrad has been looking at parts of the plot and the celestial over-view that describes vignettes of life elsewhere in apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic South Canada, because that way I can construct an elaborate extrapolative castle of background.
For starters, I believe I mistakenly quoted the mortality rate of the A-Prime superflu. It actually stands at 99.4%, which means a total of 2 million survivors in South Canada.and 48 million globally. Those 2 million are reduced to 1,666,000 in Ol' Steve's post-post-apocalypse 'die-out'. Art!
We are told, back in the days when Cold War politics are still being worked out, that Mexico and Chile have both suffered infections, which means only 750,000 immune survivors in Mexico and merely 120,000 in Chile. Peru and Senegal also get a mention, which means 200,000 survivors in Peru, who only lose 6,000 to the post-post-apocalypse die off. Still, 194,000 survivors is not a lot. And Senegal? About 110,000 survivors. Art!
If Mexico, Peru and Chile are all hotbeds of A-Prime, then you can rest assured that the whole of Central and South America is thoroughly infected. Plus West Africa if it's devastating Senegal.
What about the rest of the world? O I thought you'd never ask!
In Chapter 22 we re-encounter officer Starkey, who plots with officer Creighton to pass on the Mission Go order to a mystery third party called Cleveland. The date is June 24th and Patient Zero had spread A-Prime from 13th June. Cleveland has agents behind the lines in the Sinister Union and The Populous Dictatorship, who were shipped out with vials of the superflu under a cover story that the phials contained 'radioactive tracking elements'. Once they get the word, those phials are cracked open and whammo blammo. Art!
Well, tit-for-tat, it was biological warfare between Russia and China that devastated South Canada in "The Omega Man" so it's only polite to return the favour. Incidentally, I think Choker Number One might be the late, great Simon Oakland, wh
ANYWAY A-Prime is so contagious I don't doubt that the disease had already made incursions across the globe, and Ol' Steve does indeed mention 'technological societies' as being victims in Chapter 38. Don't forget that TS was written in 1978, when the Cold War was at either the zenith or nadir of intensity, depending on your viewpoint, and crossing into either the Sinister Union or The Populous Dictatorship would be a rare and closely-monitored event. Hence the underhand methodology. And now you know where the 'Pain' of today's title comes from. Art!
Doing the Standing Still
More Spanish Castles
Let me quote that definition again: "A visionary project or daydream, or an intangible object that may or may not exist, and on balance probably doesn't, and if it does it's way way less impressive or important than one imagines." Yes, I've cheekily expanded the quote to include my additional havering, and once again whose blog is it? Art!
O dearie me! DJT continues to slide in value and is down to almost a quarter of it's highest quotation, when it stood at just under $80 per share. Conrad listened with some glee to an senior economics analyst from ""Forbes" telling an MSNBC presenter that the stock may lose as much as 90% of it's value. Not only that, the Flabby Fraudster was trying to talk up the stock, saying that it cures gout, walks the dog and gives off a scent of lavender, which might be classed as securities fraud. As if he'd notice another indictment!
Ruffian Castles In Pain
You may have heard of the devastating Ukrainian drone strikes on Ruffian oil refineries, which have generally been seen at a distance from people's phone cameras. This kind of footage lacks definition and clarity, and a close up view.
Well, the SBU need wonder no longer. Art!
The FSB might be having a word with whoever took this video clip, as the SBU will be poring over the layout to see which refinery it is.
So, one Ruffian industrial castle (or cathedral) reduced to ruins. There is a brief comment from the filmer to his mate, walking towards the camera, something along the lines of "Can it be fixed?" to a glum shake of the head. The replacement plant would need to come from Exxon or Shell - who aren't going to supply it.
When It Rains, It Pours
The orcs of Orsk are finding this out, as are those residing in Tomsk. Conrad might do an item on what the Ruffian press is laughably calling 'dams', as we here at the blog do have an interest in dams, and more specifically dam failures. As with germ warfare, this is a tit-for-tat since the Ruffians have deliberately destroyed Ukrainian dams in the past, and now they get to undergo the experience themselves. They don't seem happy about it. In fact, the soggy boggy locals in both locations are madder than a wet hen, whose coop was probably washed downstream. This does seem to be the season for very high levels of rainfall in the Mordor hinterland. Art!
Loitering around the crumbling edges of an embankment being rapidly eroded by a raging torrent is INCREDIBLY STUPID, Darwin Award level idiocy in fact.
The word is that the 'dam' in Orsk cost 10 billion rubles to construct, which frankly sounds like typical Ruffian corruption at work, the local governor admitting that it didn't look as if cost more than 1 billion rubles. Thing is, getting it repaired is going to cost even more as the ruble is on the slide again. Art!
"City In The Sky"
The sternly empirical Captain Kirwin is being given a crash-course in trans-temporal dynamics, thanks to the TARDIS.
‘What’s all this for?’ asked Kirwin, grubby and still amazed at how
enormous planet Earth was when you were down on it’s surface. Not only that, there were frightening arthropods
here that were big enough to carry off small children – she’d disturbed several
in her quest.
The Doctor winked at her.
‘People on Arc One have refrained from asking
what the Lithoi are going to do when the sphere descends. Nothing good, I
expect. So this bric-a-brac will go together to create an electromagnetic
distraction to keep them busy.’
Both women stared at the collection of junk
before being bustled inside the TARDIS, where the Doctor hastily piloted it
into the ether again. Once again Kirwin was non-plussed by the short
duration and the different scene displayed on the scanner screen when the brief
journey ended.
‘Ace – you have your radio? Good.
Now, I must return to Arc One to provide indispensable help and advice, whilst
you two hike out to a viewing position in the
Kirwin witnessed the big blue box vanish into
thin air, leaving behind a ghostly echo sounding like the heartstrings of the
universe being given a good shaking, and felt shaken herself. The
American’s historical datacore didn’t explain explicitly how TARDIS worked,
despite the CIA having it’s hands on a copy back in the Seventies*. Matter
transmission? Teleportation? Magic?
Or all three at once.
How The World's Largest Democracy Works
India, in case you were wondering. Unlike Ruffia or The Populous Dictatorship, the end result is not pre-selected. Art!
Finally -
That's getting far too close to Politics, so we'll end things right there.
* Possibly The Master's TARDIS.
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