I Am The Law

Not In The Way You're Thinking Of

Or at least the way you should be thinking of, with a gift of a quote like that, and especially since the blog is always banging on about "Judge Dredd", that splendid role model/proto-fascist brute/humble lawman <delete where applicable>.  Of course - obviously! - this intro has nothing to do with him, which won't stop me from ruthlessly exploiting his image for traffic.  Art!

     Go on, argue the point with him, I dare you.  Conrad rather suspects Just Stop Oil would get very short shrift from Old Stonyface, especially as Mega-City One doesn't use petroleum derivatives to make plasteen, wh

     ANYWAY that's not what were yarking on about here.  What I like to skrike about today is The Law Of Unintended Consequences.  This can be defined as "The behaviour and conduct of people and/or governments, frequently has effects that were unexpected, unpremeditated or unexpected."

     O boy do they.  Art!

"Death to the West!" shouted from their GERMAN car.

     Here the Maleficent Midget (Thin Iteration) has gone begging to the other Maleficent Midget (Obese Iteration) for artillery ammunition.  The Only Fat Man In North Korea has been happily supplying the Ruffians with sub-standard stuff that's up to 50 years old, and now he gets the chance to get rid of more ancient tat at premium prices.  Putinpot gets his arsenals refilled, which is all he's bothered about; the fact that the shells detonate prematurely and kill more orcs than Ukes is of no import to him.

     HOWEVER - a word that was bound to crop up here - Charlie Chipmunk Cheeks may be contorting himself into intriguing yoga poses patting himself on his back, but there is another player in this game -

     South Korea.  Art!

Sork SPAGs

     South Korea is the world's 10th largest arms exporter.  They produce a lot of their own kit, and it's high-quality stuff, a quantum level above Ruffian kit and three or four quantum levels above what the Norks can produce.  They are, to put it mildly, extremely peeved at the Norks getting Ruffian help with technology and rocketry and spy satellites.  To date they've not given any military kit to Ukraine, because either their constitution or political delicacy won't allow actively supplying a war zone.  They have, mind, allowed South Canada to buy hundreds of thousands of artillery shells, which then mysteriously make their way to Ukraine.  Art!

     These are two examples of Sork weapons now in storage, nearly two thousand of the aged yet banging 107 mm mortar and thousands of the K3 light machine gun.  It would be simplicity itself for the Sorks to whiz these off to Ukraine, along with artillery shells by the tens of thousand.  Bunker Grandad never considered this when he visited the Land Of Chrysanthemum And Slavery, and now he's reduced to making rather impotent threats about it.  TLOIC in play.  Art!

     More of TLOIC, just to underline the point.  What you see here is the Ruffian border with NATO being increased by 800 miles thanks to Suomi joining, which will stretch Ruffian resources even further, and the Baltic becoming a NATO lake.  Again, Puffy-Phaced Petrol Pimp didn't ever consider that attacking a country to prevent it from joining NATO might provoke other nations into joining NATO pre-emptively.  Ooops.  For a '3-D chessmaster' he exhibits all the skills of a novice at tiddlywinks.  Art!

     This is the NIP-16 Satellite Tracking and Communications Centre in Crimea, one of only 4 such ground bases that the Ruffians have, which are all left over from the Sinister Union.  Meaning that they don't have the money, know-how, people or components to build any more.

     And the Ukrainians blew it up a couple of nights ago.  Yes yes yes, you should never begin a sentence with "And", sue me, it's not as if you pay to read this, is it?  The shrieks of horrified rage amongst the vatniks were loud enough to be heard here in Royton, because - once again - this is a consequence they never imagined possible in their darkest vodka-fuelled nightmares.  Art!

"Vanya realised he'd need an awful lot of gaffer-tape to fix this"

     I was going to work in a tale of domestic karma coming back to bite the baddies in the bottom, but I've spent too much time enjoying myself in tormenting the Ruffians.  O well there's always tomorrow.

Conrad's Adventures In Literature

For Your Information, I am now about 1/2 way through "The Aeneid", where Aeneas has ventured into the underworld in pursuit of the shade of his father Anchises.  He has a Sibyll accompanying him as a spirit guide, or he'd not have got far.  There is a tremendous build up to entering Hades, and descriptions of the various regions, and the spirits there, and he meets his father's ghost and then -

     He just walks out again.  Art!

     I believe that's Aeny and his lady friend at lower port.

     Then I am 10% into "The Man Who Died Twice" by Richard Osman.  Yes, that Richard Osman.  This is the second in a series about The Thursday Murder Club, about a group of seventy-year olds who - you may be ahead of me here - solve murders.  I'm positive this will end up as a Netflix series with a bunch of aging British character actors as the Club.  Art!

A wolf and a penguin.  No, I don't know why.

     Then again, I am a couple of chapters into "The Big Sleep", which I read possibly ten years ago, and even though I remember the ending the journey there through Chandler's prose is reward enough.  Art!

They will never better this version.  Not ever.

     There you go, a progress report of sorts.

This Is Healthier, South Canada

I've had a quick scan of "The Daily Beast"'s webpage and yes, they are still desperately pimping the British monarchy, this time about beauty products they have allegedly tried, which is a story so weak it needs life-support.  Art!

     This, on the other hand, is a lot more appropriate, because this Taylor Swift bloke is a native South Canadian, not an aristocrat or scion of the Royal Family.  He's very successful and immensely rich, which passes as good enough to be royalty over in South Canada.  Conrad's not sure which one of the three in top coat and tails he is, just that his backing singer is trying to hog the limelight, rather.  Get to the back of the stage, madame! where you belong!

"City In The Sky"

Ace, Kirwin and the caravan of caretakers are now met, anticipating the arrival of Arcology One from orbit.  If it makes it that far.

     ‘When was he going to put this sabotage plan into action?’

     Mute shrugs.

     ‘Sorry, he didn’t give any details.  Why?’

     ‘Because then we’d have an idea of when the sphere is being de-orbited.’

     Terry snickered.

     ‘We asked him “when”, too.  And he only tapped the side of his nose and said we’d know when the time came.’

     Kirwin visibly fumed.  It struck her as criminally negligent for Doctor John Smith to put himself at risk in such a careless fashion, with such slapdash planning.  Given the size and mass of Arcology One, they definitely would know when it returned from orbit, doubtless trailing a mane of fire and with retro-rockets sounding like the last trump!  By that time the Lithoi would know about it, too.  Then there’d be fireworks.  Their missile platform might have been blasted to atoms but the Lithoi still had that devastating particle beam weapon which had destroyed Dart Two in mid-air, and a whole batch of Chinese ICBM’s way back at the start of the Big Crash and the Great Northern War.

     Moodily kicking a stone, she looked back down the sandy, bush-dotted slopes to the Eyre Highway and the conglomeration of horsed transport now standing still for half a mile along the baked grey tarmac.  What about them?  What rabbit could Smith pull out of a hat to render that mass of friable, flammable victims invulnerable to a death-ray with a range of six thousand kilometres?

     Less a rabbit, more a lizard.

"The War Illustrated Edition 189"

It is often forgotten or ignored that the Free French were fighting in France from D-Day onwards, and, given that the Teutons were obviously losing the war there and elsewhere, the collaborators and Milice (a Vichy French fascist militia) kind of faded into the background.  Art!

     These are units of the French 2nd Armoured Division, advancing through St. Mere Eglise at top port.  Look more closely at the soldiers at upper starboard; they are all female, ambulance drivers waiting to be transported across the Channel to their units in France.  That thoughtful bloke in a jeep is the legendary General Philip Leclerc, who had fought a long and crafty war in North Africa.  He may have dreamed of leading his tanks into action to liberate France and now he's doing just that.  An M3 half-track in French service sports a portrait of General De Gaulle, probably to convey the message to any amourous young ladies - or amourous old ladies - that, yes, this vehicle has a French crew.  And at bottom port the traditional greeting for passing soldiery - thrown flowers.  Wine would have been better but the bottles are awkward to throw and catch.

Finally -

It's hot enough for me to deliquesce overnight.  If the blog is never written again, it's because all that was left of me was a large sweaty puddle.   An image to conjure with.