When Money Goes Funny

Not In A Good Way, Either

I am typing this Intro out in the last couple of hours before payday at my still coyly anonymous employer, in anticipation of which I've already bookmarked a particular collector's volume over on E-bay, which is going for only £40 inc. P & P, which I'm sure you'll agree is a bargain and it would be rude not to purchase it, alt

     ANYWAY today we're going to look at a bit of a puzzle that Conrad has noticed over the past couple of months, which 'Joe Blogs' has seen fit to explicate.  Art!

See Paragraph One

     No, that's not a contemporary Ruffian ship burning 'mazut', it's one of the Royal Australian Navy's ships from the First Unpleasantness.  I didn't want to lead with a dull and unexciting chart, you see.

     ANYWAY AGAIN let us bring on a dull and unexciting chart.  Art!

     The ruble has, so it would seem, strengthened against the dollar over the past two months, which has led to the vatniks, Krembots and fanbois all crowing about it, and how 'sanctions don't work' and 'Kyiv in three days years'.

     Not so fast.  Because the ruble is one of the world's most manipulated currencies, and has held that title for years.   Art!

  
     This is the Ruffian GDP up to the end of Q3 for 2024, and you can see that the total is declining, not increasing, which rather puts a crimp in the orc's assertions that the Ruffian economy is doing the best evah.  Also, over the lifetime of this graph, a total of $277 billion in assets were removed from Ruffia, as investors exhibited a classic example of 'capital flight'.  In possibly the horridest criticism of the Ruffian economy evah, it is now being compared to North Korea, just larger.  The symptoms are all there: invasive government management of the economy, a lack of access to Western capital and technology, a dearth of personnel (let alone qualified ones), and a cult of personality about The Glorious Leader, who can do no wrong and will have you executed if you query this.  Art!

     This is the ruble over time since August 2024, showing that it's now back at the level of about 6 months ago, which means -

     Not what you're thinking.  For one thing, in all non-Modern-day Mordor economies, the valuation of their currency is based on it being freely traded around the globe.  Not so with the Ruffian ruble, as nobody deals with or in it unless they experience a gun to the head.  The ruble in BRICS, to coin a pun, is rubble.  Nobody wants it.  This means that the Ruffian Central Bank, and Ol' Nabby, can manipulate the valuation relatively easily (if not cheaply).  Art!

So angry he ate his own lips

    The second normal assertion for normal currencies in normal countries is that their normal valuation is set by the market, normally.  Did I mention 'normal'?  But, this is Ruffia we're talking about.  Toward the end of 2024, with the exchange rate so low it could swim around the 'Moskva', Putinpot ordered the Ruffian Central Bank to prop up the ruble by spending other foreign currency, which meant the Chinese Yuan, as they've got nothing else left to purchase with.  Thus Elvira has spent, in 2025 alone, at the rate of ₽8.4 billion per day, the equivalent of $5 billion.  Joe projected this over the 12 months of 2025 and came to a total of $33 billion in expenditure - which would completely empty the National Wealth Fund well before year's end, so this ain't going to happen.  Art!

Ol' Nabby

     The NWF was down to about $35 billion in January, heaven and Ol' Nabby alone know what it's down to now.  Sooner or later they are going to run out of liquid funds to prop up the ruble, in which case the value will probably plunge and Putinpot will start stealing Russian's savings.

Fainting In Coils

The provenance of this phrase was unknown to Conrad until 3 minutes ago, and I only came across it as a track by Bill Bruford's ensemble Bruford - nil points for originality there, Bill - and he, in turn, nicked it from a Lewis Carroll line: "The Drawling-master was an old conger-eel, that used to come once a week: he taught us Drawling, Stretching, and Fainting in Coils".  

     You know, Lewis Carroll, the chap who invented the Boojum.  Art!

     Inevitably, this is a long discursion away from the real item itself, and if Art will bestir himself and put down his bowl of coal - 

     You ought to recall that we mocked Elong Tusk's electric velocipede's stock market value yesteryon, because we're cruel like that.  Well, things have not gone at all well for the Ketamine Kid today, either.  Art!

     Or, it's lost $9 overnight.  Some scamp on Twitter was saying how very awful it would be for Muskie if his Tesla stock price crashed, as it was acting for collateral against other business loans, and how people ought not to Repost this Tweet as otherwise it might never happen.

Something In The Water?

We did a rather gloasting item of late about Mopey Dick's crypto-currency, which was launched on 17th January with much fanfare and bloviating.  Art!

     Rather than being a serious (!) crypto-currency, it's what pundits rather scathingly call a 'meme-coin', in that it lacks any inherent value and is seen as either scambling or a political support token where grifters can separate the rubes from their money.  Either way, it's not doing well, apparently going sick in sympathy with Elong Tusk's Tesla shares.  Art!

     That's what it started at.  Now, as of today, what's the value?  O I thought you'd never ask!  Art?

     In the larger scheme of things, this means that DJ Tango's MAGA cult members who bought this junk specie are now down $12 billion.  This is dwarfed by the loss that Donold himself has suffered - $50 billion on paper.  Ooops.

     It could be worse, dear Orange Land Whale.  Your wife's crypto-currency has also under-performed.  Or, to put it another way, it's as dead in the water as the 'Moskva' and looks set to be the most unsuccessful meme-coin evah.  Art!

The Cup That Cheers And Not Inebriates

Another novelty for Conrad: this phrase is actually a line from a poem, by Thomas Cowper, about the delights of consuming tea.  The latter I knew (and agree with most heartily), the former not at all.

     This item is of relevance because Your Humble Scribe is now in the 28th day of his sobriety stretch, with at least another 28 to go.  What did I espy on the news feed?  Art!

     Proof that, come the apocalypse and Planet Earth is devastated by nuclear Armageddon, This Sceptred Isle will survive undaunted thanks to the humble cuppa.  In fact, to quote "The Guardian": "Among other studies, previous research has suggested people who drink tea may have a lower risk of stroke, dementia and even death."

     Looks like you're going to be reading this scrivel well into 2125, hmmmm? as long as you, too, drink tea.  None of that decaff frappucindiculous Starrybunk nonsense.

Erk

What follows is a sidebar title that you're not going to see anywhere else anytime soon, if ever.  Art!

     This is one of a vanishingly few examples of the vitrification of humans, discovered in the remains of a man killed by the eruption of Vesuvius, at Herculaneum.  It's so rare because it takes a very, very specific set of circumstances for it to happen.  Art!

Well-preserved Hercky

     Note the lack of cheap jokes at the expense of <insert detested entity here>.  You see?  I can occasionally exhibit a modicum of glass.  Sorry!  Class, I meant class.

Finally -

Unless I write it down, it doesn't exist, so I need to look up 'substitute for pineapple', because there's a recipe in my diabetic cookbook for a cake that uses the Devil's Pinecone.  I'm guessing peach, apricot or mango, and we do have a tin of peaches going in the cupboard.  I shall let you know.

Tears, For Fears, Of Blood

Okay, I'll Admit It

Conrad is making this up as he goes along, having hit a happy coincidence in today's title and after watching a video about that very subject matter without realising what a title it would lead to.

     Firstly, I would like to explain that this is not about the British band of that name, who have had a long and sterling career.  Art!

Tempis fugit!

     Unlike many bands whose records I do not possess, Conrad bears no malice towards this pair, which must leave them pale and grateful that we're not working A Little Musical Critique on one of their lyrics.

     No, what we're going to be looking at here in today's Intro is one of the things that upsets people the more of it they see, namely blood.  By default, blood ought to be inside people, going about it's business, and if it happens to make an appearance in daylight, things have gone badly wrong.  All the more so if a person happens to be weeping blood, because this is not how normal physiology works and it makes the bleeding even more unsettling.  Art!

Bleeding unsettling

     This, lest ye be unaware, is Le Chiffre, the chief villain in "Casino Royale" and yes, that's go-juice issuing from the corner of his eye.  I think there was a hokey and unconvincing 'explanation' given, when the entire reason was to make him look sinister and eeeeevil.  Or perhaps evillllllll.  The script is a little obscure.  Admit it, you'd be a tad apprehensive about a bloke who cried blood.  Art!

     Possibly the poster child for optometrists everywhere, here is Count Dracula exhibiting the opposite of his normal behaviour, which is to intake blood - that of other people - rather than expelling it.  One ought to be fearful of the Count even when he's on his best behaviour, as his lust for blood can lead to him making faux pas such as passing port to the right. or wearing red with green.  Art!

     These are also poster children, of The Infected from "28 Days Later", who take the concept of rage up a quantum level or ten.  They suffer from chronic eye-bleeding, which exsanguination you ought to keep well clear of, as it's an infection source.  Fear The Walking Bled, you might say.

     I pinched these stills from a new Youtube channel from which I've seen exactly one previous video: "Captain Gold", who has a large number of vlogs dealing with various zombie franchises.  There is a fascinating Comment about the vlog he did on trying to survive "28 Days/Weeks Later".

I discussed this films etiology with my Microbiology professor and he told me that the speed of infection is so out of this world as so much ATP would be required for the massive scale of cellular division. Also the cellular replication of this disease would generate so much heat due to the ridiculous amount of cellular division going on, the patient/subject would die. The first subject would get the disease and die before "turning".

       "ATP" is 'Adenosine Tri-Phosphate" and is one of the agencies within cells that stores energy.  Once again, a bit worrying that a medical professional actually gives weight to a zombie infection.  The problem with diseases as dangerous and infectious as The Rage Virus is that their victims would die off far too quickly to transmit the disease across any large area, especi

     ANYWAY I wanted to round off this Intro with "Tears Of Blood", since we've not had anything Korean so far.  This is, of course - obviously! - published in the Hangul alphabet.  Art!

     Except this is a translation into the Roman alphabet.  The subject was a 70-year old Korean , Young-Bok Son, captured and imprisoned by the Norks during their civil unpleasantness, who only returned to the Sorks in 2020.  The Norks, you see, being utter dastards, did not release 60,000 Prisoners of War that they held at the armistice (not a ceasefire) in 1953.  Art!

     Guess what?  This is another Korean work of literature, also called 'Tears Of Blood', except this one was written in 1906 by Yi In-Jik.  It is set during the First Sino-Japanese Unpleasantness, and concerns a woman separated from her husband and child by the war itself.  Koreans regard it as the first 'modern' Korean novel, beginning a literary revolt against the supernatural and feudal ethics and morals.  Very, very dated nowadays, but an interesting historical perspective.

     Enough of the lachrymagory, to coin another word.

Talking Of Rapid Disease Onset

In 'Wolf Hall' a mysterious affliction called 'Sweating Sickness' occurs twice in the narrative, with the second outbreak becoming a serious pandemic at the time (1517).  The disease is notable for being extremely rapid in onset, with the less fortunate victims dying within 24 hours of the symptom's appearance.  Art!

     Conrad, being of a curious nature, went to teh Interwebz to see what this affliction was, only to find that nobody really knows.  The first time it appears is in 1485, the last was 1551, and it never re-appeared after that.  Unlike a normal disease pandemic, it occurred in sharp spikes rather than being spread out over time.  Having the sweats once did not provide further immunity, as it was quite possible to survive multiple infections. 

     The best fit as a suggestion is of a 'Hantavirus', whatever one of those is, because none of the other plagues of sixteenth-century Europe had the same symptoms.  Most peculiar!

More Of 'What?'

One thing that Your Humble Scribe cordially detests is the shoe-horning of headlines into incomprehensible gibberish by sub-editors more interested in column inches than clarity.  Then there are these titles on sidebar items on my news feed.  Art!

     OMG!  Monolith closed!  How shocking!

     Actually I've not the faintest idea what they're talking about here.  The 'PC Gamer' part indicates that yes, this is to do with computer games.  But 'Monolith'?  Is it a game?  A platform?  Streaming service?  Games company?  Mysterious structure found under a crater on the Moon?

"Giant liquorice cake was too evolved for the hominids to appreciate"

You What, Part The Second

As you may be aware, Conrad likes his books, and since Friday is payday - yes they give me a salary for making people cry on the phone - I have been idly perusing both "Turner and Donovan" and "Abebooks" in order to see if there are any more cheap volumes in the Australian Official History of the Great War.  Conrad already has Volumes III, V, VI & VII and is always on the lookout for the missing volumes as long as they don't cost an arm or leg.  Except - Art!

     I was using the search terms "Bean" because he's the official Ocker author, and "1914" as this is in the title.  Where this result above hies in from I cannot tell.  Is there a British shrub that grows a crop of beans?

Coarse And Effect

Ho ho ho, it would seem that Bitcoin, one of the staple (NOT stable!) high-profile  cryptocurrencies out there, has been hit rather hard over the past few days, losing 17% of it's value.  Art!

     Conrad doesn't follow this fool's gold's value as it can go up and down like a ride at Blackpool Pleasure Beach.  Interesting to note it's sudden increases and decreases over recent months, though.  Art!

     The value shot up when Captain Cholesterol won the 2024 election, as I've helpfully added a date tag on the graph.  The 100 day honeymoon period seems to have come to an end, doesn't it?  I may come back to this graph in the near future to see what's happened to it by March.

     For those of you still awake and aware, we'll be getting back to mocking Muscovy about their miserable currency, the ruble, shortly.  Yes yes yes, I know I'm being horrid but I have to keep in practice.

Cities In Blight

As You May Know By Now

Because I do make mention of it every year, Conrad is a big fan of the old quadrology by James Blish, titled "Cities In Flight", made up of four works that were published in the sequence 3rd, 1st, 4th and 2nd.  Blish later went back and made numerous corrections and emendations to his texts, which were published over the space of 15 years.  Art!

Very subtly done

     Today we are going to be looking at the first by internal chronology and second by date of publication: "They Shall Have Stars".  The alternate title in South Canada was "Year 2018!" which seemed futuristic at the time and sadly dated now.

     The novel details, with pages of algebra, the discovery of what is later dubbed the 'Dillon-Wagoner Polarity Generator' which is a species of anti-gravity drive.  Paige Russell, one of the protagonists, is treated to a short trip to Jupiter aboard a small ferry ship that manages to accelerate up to 1/4 of the speed of light on the way there.  The accidental discovery of anti-agathic drugs, which slow down aging to practically nil, is also detailed. Art!

     However - first use today! - this Intro isn't about the technical gimcrackery present as the chrome on this story.  Rather, we're looking at the political background that Blish imagined for his dystopian future, which may have had a very sidelong referral to the McCarthyism present in South Canada at the time.  It also has a rather peculiar reference to contemporary events, which is my sly way of referring to modern P-word events without using the P-word.  Art!

  Ol' Blishy explains that in the West, this timeframe is known as the 'Age Of Defence', and the opponent is still the Sinister Union.  "To know was to be suspect, in the West as in the USSR.  The two great nation-complexes had been becoming more and more alike in their treatment of 'security' for the past fifty years."

     Ooo-errr matron.  We are also introduced to the 'hereditary head of the FBI', one Francis Xavier MacHinery, whom is as tender and forgiving as cholera made out of granite.  FXMH's grandfather had persuaded the incumbent Prez to make the position hereditary, and the cunning, malicious and ambitious grandson used the FBI to relentlessly and ruthlessly promote himself.  Art!

     Not at all similar to Edgar J. Hoover, not at all.  No way.  MacHinery has a head of white hair, you see.  Although to come to the attention of either was potentially ruinous.

     From 2018, let us move forward to 2105, which is the date Ol' Blishy selected for the fall of the West.  Rather than being an epic and apocalyptic battle between the two power blocs, which as the author citrically points out would have depopulated Planet Earth overnight, the West instead morphs into a political and social landscape indistinguishable from the Sinisters.  By trying to prevent the Sinister's irruption into Western civilisation, the West adopted their opponent's very being itself.

     Since the Sinisters had a lot more experience of administering a skull-crushing totalitarian dictatorship, they merely moved into run the West in a bloodless change of personnel.  "We had to destroy democracy in order to save it", to paraphrase a line from a South Canadian officer.  Art!

     The end result of this political micro-quake is the 'narrow planar despotism' (great description!) which is dubbed "The Bureaucratic State" and which girdles the planet like a strait-jacket.  One can believe this.  Let me put up a couple of pictures from PS01 on Twitter that illustrate this point quite well.  Art!

     One wonders how well this kind of rampant administrative inflation would sit with the South Canadians now under Sinister management, because one of their touchstone beliefs is in 'small government' and this is quite the opposite.  Conrad suspects they would hold their tongues, as one of MacHinery's preferred methods of execution was being sent to a nuclear pile waste-dump, a sentence not conducive to long life or good health.

     Well, there you have it.  One can see the inchings towards this horrid future in the here and now.  May we live in interesting times indeed!

Conrad's Feeling Malicious

That is, more malicious than usual.  This is an example of low-hanging fruit, being Waste Of Breath Hegseth.  Art!

     "- hours-long drinking sessions he requires staff to attend in order to brainstorm ideas.  Plus he finds it difficult to pronounce or spell 'Judisheri' 'Jewshidery' 'Jisshderisshery' or 'Choodidgery' after half a bottle of Jim Beam."

     Every word true.  

     Remember that urban legend about how you're never more than six feet away from a rat when you're in an urban environment?  Heggy is one of those ra politicians who is never more than six feet away from a glass or bottle of whisky.

Matilda Mother

I know what you're thinking, and you're wrong.   WRONG!  Art?

     Song Three?  You might also be wondering about track 5, 'Pow R. Toc H', which I'm not going to go off on a tangent about tonight.

     ANYWAY none of this is to do with TANK, because we are here about a fascinating thread that Dennis Burns posted on Twitter, all about the British Matilda II Infantry Tank and it's service in the Far East during the Second Unpleasantness.  Art!

     The Matilda was principally known for it's service in North Africa, where it proved an hideous surprise to the Italians in late 1940, and was equally loathed and detested by the Teutons when they arrived.  Both armies cursed it as being a real mother-

     By late 1941, though, it was obsolete in this theatre, thanks to the very rapid development of armour* and armoured* warfare.  Which is not to say it was totally obsolete, because there was still the Far East theatre, where Japanese tanks were waaaay underdeveloped compared to the Axis ones in Europe.  Art!

     The most common Jap tank, the Type 95 Ha-Go.  It only weighed 7.5 tons and had armour of between 6 to 12 mm, mounting the ubiquitous 37 mm calibre gun that was so common at the start of the Second Unpleasantness.  Art!

     Here's one of the Matilda's in Ocker service.  It fits handily into a Landing Craft Mechanised, which were capable of taking up to 30 tons of cargo.  The Matty weighed 28 tons fully fuelled and armed, so no problems there.  In comparison to the Ha-Go, it had armour of 78 mm at it's thickest, meaning Japanese tanks and anti-tank guns found it extremely difficult to stop, let alone damage.  The 2-pounder it was armed with was, on the other hand, very effective against anything the Japanese had.  It remained in service in the Far East up until August 1945, because if it isn't broken, don't fix it.

     We will most definitely come back to this.  I bet you can hardly wait.

Bad Day For Bit

Ah yes, the bitcoin scamble markets are taking a bit of a bath at present, because the Norks hacked into 'Bybit' and stole $1.5 billion worth of Ethereum coins, which is easy peasy in the world of crypto-currency.  Imagine trying to steal $1.5 billion in gold bullion, or even notes.  You'd need a fleet of container wagons, which is hardly discreet and might give the game away.  Art!

     The turquoise line is the Trump crypto-coin, whatever it's called, and the orange is Bitcoin, the purple being Ethereum.  Who knew that getting £1.2 billion in proper currency stolen would affect the markets!  Or, as Donold likes to type, 'stollen' because he ignores the spellchecker and is perpetually thinking of what cake he can eat next.  Perhaps he should try pie.  Humble pie.  Eating that would probably give him a stroke.  "I admit that my meme-coin has not been very successful and all I can offer is covfefe -" then his brain implodes. 

What - What Is This?  What's Going On!

I can only append a photograph of Henry Cavill and Timothy Chalamet, and have my eyebrows toboggan into my hairline in surprise.  Art!

*  NOTE CORRECT SPELLING

Swanning About

Sorry, But We're Going To Be Returning To the "Invincible" Universe

Though not without a long detour first, because when did we ever get straight to the point?  Don't forget, a geodesic is the most boring way between A and B over a curved surface.  

     SO!  We have made occasional reference to that 1987 epic "Swan Song" by Robert McCammon, which will never get made into a film because the paperback is about two-and-a-half inches thick, nor a television series because the over-all theme has too much in common with "The Stand".  Art!

     That's the paperback version I had - twice! - and which you cannot get for love nor anything but vast sums of money nowadays.  I did check it out on Abebooks earlier today and - let Art's picture tell six thousand nine hundred and seventeen words.  

     I think this one cures the common cold, cystitis, hives, fallen arches, lack of moral fibre and male pattern baldness if you merely touch it.  Or it ought to, at that price.  Conrad quietly hopes a new edition from a new publisher comes out and undercuts all the Dog Buns! speculators on the market.  It happened with -

     But no, that's another story for a different kitchen.

     ANYWAY it's a mixture of post-apocalyptic South Canada, after a big nuclear exchange between them and the Sinisters (which instantly dates it), and the supernatural, with an evil entity variously known as "The Man With The Scarlet Eye" and "Friend", although "Fiend" would be more apt in this case, pursuing the titular character Swan across the barren wastelands and barely-surviving townships.  Art!

CAUTION! may change appearance without warning

     Friend is pretty much evil personified, if not quite in the flesh, as he - as it assumes male shapes - is a shapeshifter, able to mimic humans in any number of different guises.  He is also telepathic, and has sinister mind control powers, and has influence over animals.  Predatory animals, it has to be clarified, as his voodoo works on wolves but not horses.  Nor Swans.

     Quite the package, hmmmm?  Yet he proves to be utterly fallible for all his power and ability, chasing after a bauble when Swan was the bigger threat to his existence.  In fact he is diverted from pursuing Swan for years and when he finally catches up with her it's in t

     But, again, that's another tale for a different kitchen.  Art!

     The point I am trying to make here is that Friend is so innately powerful that he never had to develop an intellect, leaving him rather stunted in the field of intelligence, unable to cope with a situation that leavens normality with things supernatural.  Supernatural beyond his very limited ken.  His ability to control others, change appearance like changing a shirt, shucking off bits of himself to go circulate as spy-flies, being able to ignite matter by touch - none of this befits him to track down the real, long-term threat to his existence.

     Now, back to "Invincible".  The Viltrumites are a race of super-powered humanoids, so humanoid they are effectively identical to humans.  In physiology.  They can fly, are super-strong, practically invulnerable, can travel through space absent a space suit, and embody all the very worst politics, behaviour and attitude of the Third Reich crossed with the Sinisters.  Art!

In an act redolent of "Quatermass and the Pit", what you see here is a purge of the native population of Viltrum, by the rest of Vitrum, where anyone unfortunate enough to be dead was obviously undeservingly weak and thus richly deserved it.

     From that beginning, the Viltrumites set out to conquer the galaxy, because they had decided that The End Justifies The Means.  Art!

     They would create a Golden Age, even if it meant killing everyone in their path, because then any other civilisations would bend the knee in order to survive.  The old Roman saying "He made a desert, and called it Peace" comes to mind.

     Now, until Omni-Man was sent to Earth to prep it for Viltrumite conquest and takeover, the Viltrumites entire philosophy and existence was dominated by Punching.  Their strategy was Punching, their tactics were Punching and if they ever attained an operational art, that, too, would have been Punching.  Punch Punch Punch.  After all, if you're a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.  Art!

SPOILERY BIT AHEAD HERE JUST SO YOU KNOW

I DID WARN YOU

     At the crux of a battle between Nolan and his son Mark, which devastates Chicago and kills thousands, Nolan cannot bring himself to do the Viltrumite thing and kill Mark.  In fact he then abandons Earth and his mission of conquest, a thing unheard of in the annals of Viltrum.

     Here's the thing.  The Viltrumites fail to understand that Mark, raised in human society, has all the morals and conscience of a human, regardless of his Viltrumite genes.  His father, despite being thousands of years old, has been so 'corrupted' by just 20 years of living in human society that he, too, now possesses a conscience.  He's gone native.  What you might call 'cultural contamination', which was a real worry for the Sinisters about their sleeper agents in South Canada during the Cold War.

     Sometimes you need a tool more subtle than a hammer.  Try opening a stuck bottle lid with a sledgehammer and see what you get.

    Of course, I could be overthinking this .....

I'm Not One Bit Sorry

Saw this sidebar on the BBC News webpage and couldn't resist coming up with a snarky riposte.  Art!

     Annnnd here is Conrad's response.  Art!

     That's how.

     For those unaware, this is a cod novel written by the Adolf Hitler whose 1923 putsch attempt failed, and who then fled to South Canada, to make a living by writing pulp sci-fi stories and novels.  Pretty obviously Elong Tusk's fave sci-fi novel.

An Unfinished Saga

You may remember that Your Humble Scribe posted a web calculator that worked out the value of black walnut timber, because these trees are verrrrry pricey indeed.  Let us also look at the 'Honey Locust' bush.  Art!

     This is important, as a screen of black walnut and honey locust trees stood between Tree Victim and Evil Neighbour when he moved into the newly-bought property.  EN was disliked up and down the locality, and proved this when they complained about the trees and shrubs, which formed a privacy screen.  O how they complained!  Which TV just ignored.

     Until they came back from a week-long holiday and found that EN had trespassed onto TV's property in order to hack away at the trees, removing any privacy.  They even sent a gloating e-mail to TV about how they'd done them a good turn.

     Yeah right.  Art!

     TV got an arboriculturist out to assess the damage, which just kept climbing in value.  From an initial $12,000, it skyrocketed when it transpired that the injudicious pruning had spread canker amongst all the trees.

     Final total?  $158,000.

     This is as far as the story goes, with TV speculating that the (retired and incomeless EN) damages are high enough that his spiteful and petty neighbour is going to have to sell her house to settle things.

     Tee Hee.  Or should that be Tree Hee?

 

I'd Forgotten About This

You may have, too, given that the Orange Land Whale has been bloviating non-stop since Elong Tusk won the election for him.  Remember that Fatty brought out a crypto-currency, in order to gull the credulous and witless?  Conrad cannot even remember what it was called.  Art!

     For those not gifted with mathematical acumen, this is a 54% drop over a one-month period and as you can see from the graph above, the overall trend is down.  No doubt Donold will blame this on Biden, Ukraine, Covfefe and bot weevils affecting crops in the Sanjak of Novi Pazar, anything but admitting his own piehole-flapping.

     I think another Tee Hee! is in order.  Or should that be Ordure?

Finally -

I shall spare you any pictures, but the dressing is finally off my big toe, revealing a toe now trimmed of hard skin and looking rather pink around the prior gaping hole.  So, I may be venturing for a shower tonight without the faithful (and painfully tight) shower boot.  Wish me luck.