Then, If You Had A Long Memory
You might blurt out "Glen Close!" or "Jeff Bridges!" or "That Eighties murder mystery that Conrad has never seen and doesn't intend to!" because his interests do not stretch to fictional courtroom dramas when the real thing lurks out there. Well, by 'lurking' I mean 'being played on every YouTube channel under the sun, and not a few under the Moon, too." Art!
Plot twist: it was the female lawyer who did it!
Maybe. I dunno, I've never seen it, and also you are firmly in the WRONG.
No, this Intro is another referral to that intrepid Roman hiker and climber, Bruno Pisani. We've covered a couple of Bruno's other mountaineering exploits on peaks in the Dolomites; today we look at he (and buddy Marco) ascending the Morion Ridge, which is situated in the Valle d'Aosta. This geographical feature is so jagged and sharp you could cut bread with it. Art!
That tiny cabin is the Bivacco Pasqualetti, named after an expired Roman mountaineer. Yes, it was airlifted into position by helicopter. It's located at a height of 3290 metres in the frangible d'Aosta peaks, which are described as being so risky that they "Never allow to progress in a completely safe way". The ridges lack any water source so any climbing party has to carry their own from much lower down.
This is what I love about Bruno - he's willing to put his life on the line so that we don't have to. Art!
10:30
This is our intrepid pair setting off from the valley. Note the plentiful greensward, bushes and trees. These environmental fixtures will be around for a while. Art!
As indeed they are here. You can get a sense of how far and how high Bruno and Marco have hiked by virtue of the ridgeline in the background. This is steep going and there's lots of it. Art!
Welcome to Rifugio Crête Sèch, which you will observe is more like a chalet than a wooden hut. Well, yes, because the logistics for construction here in the foothills are more conducive to more expansive buildings. Note, too, how the trees and bushes are now absent a few hours into the hike. Art!
Our Adventure Buddies are now above the treeline, which accounts for the rather lunar look of the landscape here: no longer any plants, except possibly for a few hardy lichens on the odd rock, which is nothing to write home about. This part of the ascent is still hiking, not climbing, so your average couch potato would be suffering from exhaustion by this point, if they'd got this far. Art!
This is the point at which hiking turns into climbing; both now have helmets on, donned safety harnesses and are roped together. Part of the reason why Bruno hadn't scaled this height previously was safety, because you really wouldn't care to tackle this ridgeline solo. Art!
He also has either the modesty or cheek to claim that he's not a technically accomplished climber, an opinion with which I beg to differ - check out the shot above to see the kind of geology he's tackling. Yes, there is distortion from the fish-eye lens, which still doesn't detract from the fact that this is Dangerous Stuff. Art!
Amateur my hairy white hindquarters!
By this time the sun was setting and they'd been on the go for nine hours, and you don't want to be clambering over the Morion Ridge in darkness. Art!
Destination visible!
Well, to jump forward a few minutes, they get there before night fully descended, but they were still using their helmet lights to see where to put feet and hands. Art!
That's great, chaps! Now all you have to worry about is reversing this process in the morning. The terrain will gradually become less murderous as you descend, if that's any consolation. Art!
Here you see the cabin's interior. Quite cosy! Note our diligent duo tidying up after themselves, which is only meet and seemly to do. Art!
Bruno counts the number of visitors that year. He and Marco make the sixth group, rather up from his guesstimate that the Bivacco would see one or two groups annually.
For those wondering why, GO BACK AND READ THE INTRO. Sheesh.
Taunt Me With What I Cannot Have!
Your Humble Scribe is about half-way through "Feed", that zombie novel which appears to be the first in a trilogy. We will reserve judgement as to whether the other two are going to get read, and whether I'll re-read this one before gifting it to Darling Daughter. Art!
It runs to 600 pages. Do you really need another 1,200 to complete a story?
ANYWAY there's a description in there that hit home hard - George mentioned "Hostess snack cakes". We believe she means these - Art!
Perhaps being coy thanks to copyright issues? Conrad used to love these completely artificial confections, mostly because he is a walking sweet tooth with no finer sense of taste. There is an assertion that Twinkies are so stuffed with and made of artificial foodstuffs that they will never experience being past a 'Sell By' date. Urban legend or hideous reality? Only you can tell!
This One Appears To Have Legs
Yesteryon we dealt with a couple of blokes called 'Drake' and 'Kendrick', whom Conrad was utterly unacquainted with, and didn't feel any the poorer for being to ignorant.
Well, "The Daily Beast" is still milking whatever and whomever they are. Art!
NO IT HASN'T! YOU FATUOUS BAFUNES!
I feel there is so much "Bah!" here I shouldn't need to say it.
"City In The Sky"
The eeeevil alien Lithoi are trying to cope with the Doctor's awe and mock efforts
‘They are not powered by any conventional means,’ said the shift
supervisor. ‘We detect no stripped
photons, no ion flow, no high-energy propulsion matrix, not even exhausted
hydrocarbons.’
He pointed to the big three dimensional display where four returns were
shown, in brackets.
‘They have an in-built randomisation function that prevents prediction
of their flight direction.’
A fifth return pinged into existence.
‘Target that one and destroy it!’ ordered Arkan 22. The baseship’s central cannon was accordingly
deployed, the beam set to begin collimation five hundred metres beyond the
delicate camouflage membrane in order to avoid damaging it.
However, moments after the fifth
human craft had been destroyed, one of the others vanished. Within moments the scanners began to suffer
degradation of signal. Twice more the
cannon came into operation, and the last human craft winked out of
existence. Again, the scanning signal
suffered from interference.
For over two hours the erratically flown human craft drifted across the
scanning screens, sometimes being destroyed, sometimes vanishing
mysteriously. Visual confirmation merely
revealed dark objects that bobbed and weaved in strange avoidance patterns.
Finally, Solskan 75, a meteorologist and correspondingly of low-caste
(for there was little difficulty in predicting weather when sitting in the
middle of a desert) realised what had been happening. His status made access to the higher ranks
tardy but he finally got through to Arkan 22, who had been watching in the
company of Miskan 54.
The balloon antics of balloonatics.
As One Door Opens, Another Hits You In The Hindquarters
As you may be aware, Bunker Grandad had a parade of big shiny toys on May 9th, and because he lives in mortal fear of his epidermis being pricked by high-velocity metals, the airspace above Dol Guldur Moscow was a no-fly zone during the parades, up until the very end. This is because Ukraine might come to say hello with drones, drones filled with explosives, drones filled with explosives that might dive upon the assembled VIPs. Art!
Hence the presence of orcs wielding anti-drone guns, and doubtless electronic warfare vehicles up the wazoo, which means -
If all the EW gear is protecting Putinpot's delicate hide, then it can't be in all the other places, can it? Art!
This is one of the Uke's microlight aircraft converted into a whacking great drone filled with HE, one of three that hit the Ruffian refinery in Bashkiria. They are very slow, and would be easily downed by EW units or anti-drone guns - except there were none there.
Ooops.
Also, the Mordor Ministry Of Fire And Brimstone probably thought that, at 875 miles distance from the Ukrainian border, Ol' Bashy was out of the danger zone.
Ooops again. Art!
The Ukrainians gloasted that it actually flew 1,500 kilometres, probably to ignore SAM or radar concentrations, and one thing lacking on the film clip that "Suchomimus" posted up is small-arms fire. The Salavat refinery was caught with it's pants down.
Conrad's rule-of-thumb is that, for every orc refinery rendered offline, deduct another $5 billion from the Ruffian state budget. Art!
Behold The Tank for the 2025 Victory Parade.
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