You Ought To Know By Now
Of Conrad's dalliance with Korean culture, inspired by their genre shows on Netflix and the array of unusual food portrayed therein, which is why I have a Korean cookbook, a stack of hand-written Korean recipes and a collection of durable ingredient such as sesame seed oil and udon noodles. SSO really adds to the bouquet of a meal thanks to the very different and noticeable smell as it sizzles in the pan. Art!
Sorks
I recently picked up my book on Korean history and culture again, and have now reached the position of their nation as it was in 1905, a date we shall come back to, and which the military anoraks amongst you might recognise. Let us travel back a little further in time, as the nation was developing under the late 'Choson' period, which can also be translated as 'Joseon', depending on which iteration you use. Art!
Mountains as painted by Chong Son. This one is 'Kumgang Chondo' )or 'Geumgang Jaeondo') and typifies the new, realistic style of painting at this time. Genre painting that represented the everyday life of normal people also came into vogue at this time, and if Art will bestir himself -
"An Amusing Day In A Spring Field"
The artist is one Sin Yun-Bok, who specialised in portrayals of people rather than landscapes. The stringed instrument in the foreground appears to be a 'Gayageum' and I think what looks like a decapitated head is actually a brazier of sorts. Art!
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| "A Boy Cutting A Red Flower" |
Also having a bit of a flirt with a young lady, methinks. Conrad thinks the lettering here is actually Chinese, not Hangul, but don't quote me on that as I'm the opposite of an expert. Where is Jake Broe when you need him?
Korea has been split asunder since 1953, whereupon it gravitated into the Sorks, who inhabit the South, and whom are affluent, Western-oriented, technologically advanced and best known to the rest of you via "Squid Game", and the Norks, who infest a benighted starving fourth-world hellhole, where the best television has to offer is synchronised tractor-ploughing. Art!
Don't try and watch this one unless you're sober, it's far too difficult to follow, what with all the jumping around in different timestreams.
For your information, these are three Norcs wanted for the murder of Ruffian soldiers. No, not for accidentally killing Ruffians, whom they cannot distinguish from Ukrainians, just deliberately killing them. You may also remember that 18 Norcs went AWOL as soon as they arrived in Kursk, and you may not be aware that those who survive have made the acquaintance of two hideous Western novelties: mobile phones and <ahem> pornography. Art!
The Norcs also get preferential treatment in hospitals, whereas the average orc gets sent back into the front lines to die in a meat wave attack on his crutches*. Naturally this rather stokes up resentment amongst the Ruffians, who are also uneasy about Ruffian women wanting to try something a little more exotic than Nogbad from Norilsk.
So, why would The Only Fat Man In North Korea send 10,000 of his minions to fight and die in a war against the Ukrainians? Artem points out the more immediate problems: the Norcs haven't fought a war since 1953 and think the Degtyarev light machine gun of Thirties vintage is still cutting edge;
they cannot speak or read Cyrillic nor can Ruffians read Hangul, which has led to major problems on the battlefield since the Ruffian words for 'Fire!' and 'Retreat!' sound exactly the same to untrained ears; the Ruffians thoughtfully issued their Norc meatbags summer uniforms to wear on snowy white battlefields - and the list goes on. Art!
Why would TOFMINK be sending his Norcs to die by the thousand? Artem provides a bit of background from UPI, dated December 4th, which mentions that the Nork Won, their unit of currency, has undergone a drastic collapse, from ￦9,000 to the dollar to ￦18,000 to the dollar over the past six months. The same is true against the Chinese Yuan - from ￥1,200 to the Won to ￥2,400. These are signs of severe, prolonged and a worsening economy. Thus, if Putin can supply a few trainloads of grain, TOMFINK will be able to dine on them for the foreseeable future. His minions can always eat each other, as they did in the Nineties**. Art!
Bear in mind that any surviving Norcs who return home will be instantly whisked off to re-education camps, kept apart from the rest of the Nork population and probably quietly executed when no-one's looking. Because they have tasted the forbidden fruit of technology - mobile phones - and depravity - which is where we'll call this Intro closed.
"Wolf Hall" By Hilary Mantel
Your Humble Scribe is aware that there's a television series adapted from this novel, although I've never seen a single second of it. Wonder Wifey recommended it, so it may happen at some point. In the meantime, as Spacehog used to say, there's the novel itself, which I have begun. Art!
You can't tell from this view, which doesn't include the side shot, but this novel is 650 pages long and so far I've only reached 20. So about 3%. Now, you might jib at the bare-bones description of this work, being about Thomas Cromwell, and his rise to and retention of power at the court of Henry VIII in the sixteenth century. However - that word again! - it's well-written and involving from the get-go - we do seem to be having a lot of hyphenated words in this item - and is very much dealing with things as they were at the time, not through a 21st century lens. Art!
The very excellent Mark Rylance as Tom. Nice to see a character actor getting a lead role. This would never happen in South Canada, where everyone on-screen has to be young and beautiful, even if their character is old and ugly.
The Awesome Revenge Of Deceived Sweetheart, Part Two
Yesteryon we lead with an Intro about how DS revenged herself on her cheating boyfriend, Max, and her 'best friend' Amy, whom were disguised behind insulting nicknames. Not today!
What happened after DS moved and ghosted both of them? Nothing that she'd planned, which is why I didn't mention it in the breakdown of her Big Revenge Plot yesterday. Art!
"Disappointed mother"
One of the recipients of DS's mass e-mail about what the Gruesome Twosome had been up to (fornicating behind her back) - with screenshotted evidence because this gel was thorough thorough thorough - was Max's mother, who was a supremely successful businesswoman. She was so disgusted at her son's behaviour that she changed her will, leaving her business to his brother. This inheritance had been a source of pride for Max, which DS well knew, and she rather bitchily wrote that she knew he'd weep genuine tears about being disinherited. Too bad so sad, Max. Salty self-pitying tears are the best for bathing in, folks.
There is yet more of this saga, pilgrims, which will have to wait for another BOOJUM! or we'd be hitting 20,000 as the Word Count.
"The War Illustrated Edition 204 April 13th"
Any British readers perusing this magazine at the time might have felt a cold hard sense of schadenfreude as the depictions of destruction wrought were within Germany, not the lands it had occupied any more. Art!
That headline reads 'On The Eve Of The Last Big Battles In The West' and the picture at top shows Canuckistanian troops taking shelter behind an abandoned Teuton artillery piece. Interestingly enough, the towing vehicle is nowhere in sight, so Conrad suspects they may have ditched this large, massy and cumbrous piece of kit in order to flee all the quicker.
Below that, to starboard, you can see Monty, Jorrocks (as the 30 Corps commander was known to all) and the humourless martinet Thomas, OC of the 43rd division,
At port bottom, a GI escorts in a party of surrendering Teutons. The blurb claims they're a medical party but Conrad, cynic that he is, suspects the Red Cross flag was the biggest and closest they could get to a white flag.
At starboard bottom I've not captured the whole thing properly but cannot be bothered to re-take the photo. This is one of the rare Teuton armoured vehicles around by this time (a Jagdpanther), which has met it's match thanks to a British (or Canadian) 17 pounder sabot round. Art!
This is Private W.G. Lourie and as I suspected, the anti-tank gun wreaking execution here was Canuckistanian, from their 6th Anti-Tank Regiment, as of March 16th.
Finally -
Early finish this Friday afternoon, as the other days in the week have been longer than the usual 8 hours, which is alright by me. I don't think I'm going to walk down to Lesser Sodom until the gaping hole in my toe is completely healed, that may come next week. Perhaps scaling up to taking Edna for a trot tomorrow. Baby steps.
* This is not Conrad spinning lies, it's provable via video clips.
** Again, true.
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