The invisible Monster

"How D'You Know It's A Monster If It's Invisible?"

Is the immediate response I expect from you skeptics.  Well, for one thing, if we're talking "Forbidden Planet" - gosh how surprising that I instantly chose this obscure Fifties sci-fi flick to comment on, almost as if it were pre-ordained or s

     ANYWAY you can tell courtesy of the footprints it leaves, because whilst it may be invisible, it certainly isn't inmassive.  If that's not a word already, I want royalties.  Art!

     How convenient that the C-57D had fifty gallons of Plaster Of Paris to hand, hmmmm?  Nor is that the footprint of anyone you'd want to bring home to Mother.

     Nor is that all.  I was also thinking about "The Invisible Man" in his original 1933 iteration, where he not only becomes invisible, but develops a severe case of - what's the technical term?  O yes - HOMICIDAL PSYCHOPATHY.  In case you haven't seen the film, Ol' Invy decides to use his superpower to commit mass murder.  Art!

The truth is revealed - or not.

     It's a sad consequence that becoming invisible also means becoming a raging monstrous murdering maniac, but you have to take the rough with the smooth.

     Okay, I think we've established the invisible elephant in the room.  Let us now abruptly change track, almost as if we were having our railway points changed by a mysterious invisible hand - Art!

INFLATION!

     For yes, gentle reader, we are now onto the subject of the Ruffian economy as she is detailed by "Big K", a.k.a. Konstatin Samoilov, accountant and economist at large.  "At large" mostly because he now lives in Uzbekistan, for if he were still in Mother****** Ruffia, he'd be either mobilised or in prison.  Art!

Big K looking frosty

     Yes, I'm afraid this Intro bothers itself with the Ruffian economy, and what knots it is tying itself into.  You see, Putinpot himself attended a meeting of the "Committee of Manufacturers of the Ruffian Federation", which was intended to be a mutual love-fest of boot-licking platitudes and reciprocated specious drivel.  Art!

HE'S AN AUTON!  AN AUTON I TELL YOU!

PROOF!

     Big K pointed out that, in 2023, Peter The Average had done nothing but gloast about the inflation rate at every opportunity.  How low it was, how it was going to reduce in the future, how much better it was than in Gondor the West, how Ruffia in 2024 would benefit from low inflation, Y³ (yaddah yaddah yaddah).

     Yet here we are at the CMRF and - nary a word about inflation.

It has become invisible.

     One member, who obviously hadn't received the memo, asked the Fun-Sized Foot Fiddler what was going on with inflation? to which Dimya gave a bland generic answer before giving orders that A Certain Someone needed to fall out of a window.  Art!

     What's going on?  Well, merely that the Kremlin Gremlin is living down to his standards.  If the news is bad, he simply avoids mentioning it, and since inflation has not fallen as he commanded it to, it's not permitted to mention it any longer.  King Canute, anyone?  As an example, the price of beets, eggs, tomatoes and bread have all increased in Mordor.

     Conrad has to take a break here and mention the mighty internet warrior 'Prune60', who has tracked down the Ruffian's 'Consumer Price Index' basket of goods that they use to calculate inflation.  Art!

   
    They have a very limited palette - the UK uses 744 items as of right now, adjusted constantly per month.  As a rule of thumb, add 10% to whatever figure the Ruffian government puts out as their inflation rate overall, because they are - and you may be shocked at this! - neither honest nor reliable.  Art!

Big K in monkey suit with razored chops

     Conrad remembers a vlog Big K did in mid-2022, where there were lots of goods in the shops, and no shortages, nor proof that Western sanctions had been effective - except the price of food had already increased.

A Memorandum Of Motability

Conrad is not one to blow his own trumpet, mostly because he prefers to ring his bell, which must be quite a nuisance to those who like to live silently and un-honoured.  Art!

     Here we see Edna Wunderhund straining at her leash, as there was a couple with both pram and dog on the other side of the road - which is why we were here on this side of the road.

A Problem I Can Get Behind

We have, on occasion here, mentioned the very down-to-earth and outright cinema geek channel "Terry Talks Movies", which is run by - you may be ahead of me here - Terry.  His enthusiasm for films and television programs of all varieties is infectious, and he either has an understanding family or is single.  Art!

     As he explains, there are only so many hours in the day, and here he is, trying to keep up with "The Wild, Wild West", "The Fugitive" and "Have Gun, Will Travel" in their boxed-set iterations.  That's 104 episodes for TWWW, 120 for TF, and <drum roll cymbal crash> 225 for HGWT.  449 episodes.  Ooo-err Matron, that's going to take one heck of a time to watch, let alone review!  

"City In The Sky"

The Lithoi won't know what hit them!  Especially as their human opponents have no idea, either.

     After recovering their trove of salvaged bits and pieces from an abandoned house, Kirwin popped a flare and watched where the wind took the smoke.  After that, the nine set to on a makeshift production line: straighten out the coat hangers; twist one around the other and create a cross with arms at right angles; insert a bin-liner inside another and those two inside another (guarding against perished plastics); partially melt the bases of forty candles one after the other and affix them to the coat-hanger cross; insert the coat-hanger at the neck of the bin-liners; re-inforce the neck of the bin-liner; glue a plastic cup to the crux of the coat-hangers; cut up foil decorations into five-, ten- and fifteen-centimetre lengths; fill the cup with the cut foil.

     Ace radioed the Doctor before beginning their mischief.

     ‘We’re about ready to – what should we call it?  Begin Balloonaticking.’

     ‘Splendid!’ he purred.  ‘In the nick of time.’

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR: Eight Miles High

     Silence. 

     (Deep breathing)

     Stars. 

     (Check suit Life Support tell-tales)

     Space.

     (A vista of curved metal to the horizon)

     Yet not darkness.  Earthlight, moonlight and sunlight all helped to ensure that the stark and awesome vista of Arc One in orbit didn’t suffer from a lack of illumination.

     The Doctor plodded on.  His battered spacesuit came from the arcology’s supplies rather than one of his own, since this way was quicker, and time mattered considerably here.

     Aha!  Dart Three.  The slender delta shuttle looked almost close enough to touch, an illusion caused by lack of air and consequent lack of atmospheric distortion.  He finally clambered aboard a minute later.

     Hmmmm wheels within wheels, nicht wahr?  I also suspect that the author has been using song titles for chapter titles.  

"The War Illustrated Edition 187"

At this point, in the mid-summer of 1944, the Teutons are very much on the back foot, retreating as fast as they can to avoid being cut off, surrounded or simply destroyed.  Art!

     Here you have Shermans trundling forward entirely untroubled by the Teutons, especially since the photographer is standing up in broad daylight, right next to the main line of communication.  What you also see at lower starboard and lowest starboard is that British logistical wunderwaffen: the Bailey Bridge.  This piece of real-life Meccano could be put together with few or no tools, and enabled streams or rivers to be bridged within hours of the original structure being explosively demolished.  Not as sexy as a Greyhound armoured car or an Arado jet bomber, but far, far more important.

Finally -

Looking forward to a family reunion tomorrow, where at long last the furry ball and chain can be foisted off onto other people!