I'm Pretty Certain Most Of You Would IMMEDIATELY Get It Wrong
Perhaps because I like to be ambiguous, vague, deceptive and duplicitous, which are some of my best personal qualities.
You see, Conrad the Omniscient and All-Knowing knew a title like that would instantly conjure up images of that comedy classic "Red Dwarf", which is also a sci-fi show, such a combination being one of the more difficult tropes to pull off successfully. Art!
Conrad remembers seeing this when it was first broadcast, intrigued by the blurb in the "Radio Times" and how the mining ship had a compl
ANYWAY please note that the "d" in "dwarf" is not capitalized, which ought to have tripped a red flag or two.
What, am I yarking on about that pillar of astronomical classification, the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram? Art!
You can see our Sun, a modest yellow barely-out-of-the-dwarf-class star, and the red dwarfs themselves, with a feeble surface temperature of only 3000ยบ Kelvin, which is almost cool enough to walk on.
BUT NO! this Intro's not about that. No, once again we are looking at the miseries of Modern-day Mordor, which Putinpot is desperately trying to hammer back into a Sinister Union-shaped hole. Hence the 'Red' bit. As for the 'dwarf', O boy we'll be getting into that. Art!
That's five years in the gulag for Conrad!
Now, down to brass tacks, and thanks to 'Joe Blogs', 'Prune60' and 'Inside Russia' for providing the background information for us today.
Only slightly more expensive than toilet roll
THE NATIONAL WEALTH FUND: The Ruffians were boasting of how much they had in the NWF as of the beginning of Q2: ₽12.5 trillion or $136 billion in real money. Vladimir Mirov, exiled Ruffian economist and senior civil servant, homed in on the weakness here; the LIQUID part of the NWF stood at ₽8.8 trillion at the start of the Special Idiotic Operation, or $113 billion. By April 1st - no pun intended - this had shrunk to ₽5 trillion or $53 billion, sufficient for 5 months. Art!
Conrad, earlier in Q1, predicted this 5-month deadline. The trouble with the illiquid funds is that they are tied up in government bonds and cannot be realised for another 10 years or so. Not only that, the uptake of government bonds to underwrite the economy has been distinctly underwhelming, with at least one flotation being cancelled due to lack of interest from investors. Another had one day to attract ₽500 billion in investment to achieve the predicted target. Art!
Sad Putin
DRUGS: Legal ones, you disgusting reprobates! Big K. illustrated another economic bind, that of Ruffia not bothering to import pharmaceuticals, meaning that standard medicines are now becoming hard if not impossible to obtain. Living in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, he's had on five occasions requests from family and friends still living in Barad-Duh if he can purchase drugs for them and post them on. This is nothing to do with sanctions; Ruffia simply cannot afford to make the purchase. Art!
Big K. also commented on the lack of doctors in Ruffia, because they all seemed to have ended up in Tashkent.
Anti-depressants are being gobbled up like Smarties, if you'd like to know. In Q1 of 2021 1.8 million packets of Mother's Little Helpers were sold. In that same period in 2024 3.6 million were sold. You'd also think Ruffians were hard-pressed to drink more than they already do, but the sales of vodka are continuing to hit new highs. Art!
An average night's swigging for Vanya and Katya
SLANDER: Konstantin also said that another Red aspect of the Sinister Union has returned; the denunciation letter. This was a phenomenon of the Stalinist Thirties, where the onus was on you to denounce your neighbour before he denounced you, and the joke was that the apartment block concierge had denounced both of you already. There were 145,000 denunciation letters in the first 6 months of the Special Idiotic Operation, which are now numbered in the millions. Art!
Putin needs this chap, smartish
What Do They Know That We Don't?
Yes, more recourse to the Galleries section of the "Interstellar Research Centre", and an interstellar ramjet. The thing is, these were rubbished in terms of being a viable interstellar spaceship a good few decades ago. Art!
The idea is that giant magnetic 'scoop' mounted on the bow hoovers up fuel from the interstellar medium, and uses it to sustain a fusion drive, which is what propels it along. Did they revisit the mathematics involved? Art!
Same concept, different design. Again, there is no exposition involved, so we must perchance guess at what's hot and what's not. Art!
Not even so much as a whisper about dimensions or mass. Perhaps we shall never know. O well.
"City In The Sky"
The Doctor and Orskan have fled the Bridge of the Lithoi base-ship, and are now hiding in it's voluminous bowels, whilst search parties are assembled and minions try to repair water damage.
Search teams were despatched to track down
the traitor Orskan and his interfering human companion, who worryingly remained
at large within the baseship. Arkan
couldn’t use the internal spy circuitry, either – that was in one of the
destroyed consoles, and he’d had to wait half an hour before the levels of
dihydrogen monoxide fell to acceptable levels before he could even get back on
the Bridge.
Every numberless lower-caste worker was
summoned from their work below or from rest, to repair damage as soon as
possible. Ironically they worked far
less effectively without the help of Orskan, who knew how to get the best out
of the most. Arkan’s shrill invective
only made them fearful, overly-cautious and clumsy. Periodically he would demand to know why the
traitor and helper hadn’t been found.
Because he was cleverer and faster than
the unaccelerated Lithoi, the Doctor might have answered if he had heard the
question, and he probably ran that dialogue in his mind anyway, not being one
to underestimate his own intellect. And
because a lot of the Lithoi were dithering away on the Bridge, trying to
restore computer systems that had never been designed to cope with water.
Don't count your vampire chickens before they hatch, Doctor.
Not All Palm Trees And Coconuts
Conrad, who is composed of 90% cynicism, 5% bile and a residue of tar and deuterium, has long looked askance at the tropical paradises of the Caribbean. If those islands are so idyllic, why did so many locals abandon them for the mean streets of London? Poverty and unemployment is one answer, and here's another. Art!
Hurricanes. Unless you have a private boat and lots of warning, the best you can do is hunker down and outlast the storm. At least This Sceptred Isle doesn't have these things*.
Airy-Fairy Nonsense
There are rumours about these things turning up in Ukraine already, which may or may not be true. Art!
Yes, it's been Photoshopped. However - did you think this blog would get posted without that word present? - this is how the fearful Ruffians view it from afar, as a terrifying force majeur. Their pilots are not keen on encountering it, since it's state-of-the-art radar can pick them up a hundred miles away, said radar waves to be swiftly followed by a missile. The S-300 crews aren't keen, either, since the HARM and AM-RAAM missiles it mounts can track down and destroy SAM radars even when they've been switched off. The orcs on the ground are probably wondering what a JDAM at close range feels like, and looking for a white rag, or at least an off-grey one.
Finally -
Off to make Korean savoury pancakes!
* Yet. Global warming will make it happen, just you wait.
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