On The Subject Of Falls

If You've Been Keeping Up With BOOJUM!

Which it is in your best interests to do, given that my starship invasion fleet is inbound and only 235 years away, then you'll recall an item about Niagara.  This rather ghoulish Intro featured a fall into the Niagara River (from height) rather than the more traditional journey, either voluntary or involuntary, over Niagara Falls itself.  Art!

     No, this is not a hydrographic chart of the water levels in the river before and after the Falls, although it does denote an awfully big fall.  Art!

     Ah yes, the NASDAQ graphical display showing how well - because they look as if they fell down a well - Elong Tusk's pet shares are doing.  People around the globe are variously indicating in positive fashion how negative they feel about Ol' Muskie's electric vehicles.  The big wet blanket even went running to his mommy, Bore Tusk, who has been telling the nasty mean people to leave little Elong alone and she'll tell their parents and teachers and take away their pocket money.

     To the not entirely unexpected sounds of mocking laughter and jeering, Ol' Muskie's stock has continued to imitate the Niagara River and fall off a cliff.  That chart above was early on in trading, because by close of business - Art!

     You don't have to be an economics graduate to understand that losing 1/6th of your total value IN A SINGLE DAY is not good.  Not good at all.  This is less Niagara Fall than free-fall, and the chump in charge of this is supposedly an adept businessman.  Well, he hasn't gone bankrupt six times so 'adept' is relative, one supposes.     
     To gain a little perspective, allow Conrad to illustrate this dramatic fall from grace with a longer time-scale.  Art!

     You can see the abrupt hike in Tesla stock after the Orange Land Whale got into power with Elong's backing last year, and the equally rapid drop afterwards, when it became obvious what a swivel-eyed loonwaffle he really was.  The stock today is worth less than it was in September 2024, and less than half what it was at peak price, so if you're still holding onto your holdings, har har suckar!  Art?

     Here's another stock market tranche having a bad hair day, this one being Donold Judas Trump's very own TMTG shares.  Yes, they only fell by $2.58 but since they have less than one-tenth of the value of Elong's shares, this hit nearly as hard - almost 11.5% down on the day.   Mopey Dick, if challenged about this, would instantly retort that it was fake news and he was worth one hundred trillion dollars and it's just that he has cashflow problems and <fade to distant droning> when in cold hard hateful reality his TMTG (Teenage Mutant Turtle Goitres?) valuation was $10 billion initially and is now down to $4.9 billion.  Way to go, DJ Tango, a halving in less than a year!  By 2026 it'll be penny stocks*!  A truly vincible performance!

Which Is My Unsubtle Lead-in To -

Episode 7 of "Invincible"'s 3rd Season, which is a real banger if you like wanton destruction, or even if you don't.  It features the return of an annoyance of a character and a pestilence of a character, and over 20 different Mark Grayson's.  Art!

     Just to be pedantic about the mathematics here, at one point we are told that there are 'at least 18' of these Invincible duplicates, and on Day Three we meet the ten survivors, one of whom complains to Pestilential Character that 'over half of us are dead' meaning 21 or more duplicates.  Just so we're clear.

     What's interesting about this episode is that the global response to this invasion involves a lot of other heroes from the Invincible universe, nearly all of whom Conrad recognised because I'm sad talented that way.  Let me show off my knowledge and what you're missing if you don't have Prime.  Art!

     This is 'Best Tiger', the world's best marksman, who wears a blindfold to make shooting accurately more of a challenge.  He's Chinese, remarkably athletic and able to think thousands of moves ahead of his opposition.  He's probably the prime counter to my incessant quibbling about nobody ever bothering to use guns.  Art!

     Here's the technical riposte to my constant lamenting and wailing that nobody in 'Invincible' bothers to use laser vision or incendiary eye-beams: say hello to Tech Jacket, a.k.a. Zack, because having to introduce yourself as the former is a buzz-kill.  Zack, of course - obviously! - acquired his Tech Jacket from a dying alien, and it bestows on him invulnerability, super-strength, flight and incendiary eye-beams, whoopee.  Art!

     This trio is Kid Thor, Bolt and Knockout.  Bolt I'm not at all sure about.  Kid Thor wields a mighty hammer, again answering my critique of nobody ever bothering with blunt instruments to knock villains around with, and Knockout is good at punching people, like a less problematic Viltrumite.  Art!

     Here's Donald, or what's left of him, again.  He performs the function in this series that Kenny does in "South Park" and this is either the thirty-eighth or thirty-ninth time he's died.  The other chap is Brit, whom is - you may be ahead of me here - British**, and indestructible.  Not just practically invulnerable, totally indestructible.  Thus really invincible.

     I think that'll do as a quick intro to the Invincible Universe supporting characters.  The last episode of Season 3 is due out on Thursday, which is going to start off with a battle between Mark and a Viltrumite calling himself 'Conquest'.  We shall see what happens there.  It's so long since I read the comic I can't remember.

Shades Of Devo

Yes, the bizarre band who emerged in the late Seventies and scrawled their peculiar art upon the walls of musicdom.  Are they still around?  Apparently so.  Art!

The traffic cone as cheap novelty hat

 
     Their mainstream breakthrough came with 'Whip It', which included the lyrics

I say whip it

Whip it good

I say whip it

Whip it good

     And do you know, those folks at Crufts, the giant annual dog show, took this line to heart, if a few decades late, because - Art!

     Whippet good!  Whippet better than rest!  Whippet very best!

A Modicum Of Sanity Has Returned

Boo.  I refer to our traffic stats on the Blogger tracker, which seems to have decided to become accurate rather than flattering.  Art!

     'Today' is the small hours of Tuesday morning, hence the zero.  96 is pretty good going for a Monday.  You can't realistically believe that total of almost six thousand hits in ten days, the algorithm is definitely skewed but Your Humble Scribe has no idea by how much.  I wonder where the biggest audiences are viewing from?  Art!

     Hmmmm.  South Canada not Singapore this time.  They seem to be lapping up all the opprobrium we dish out.  No accounting for taste, is there? said the man who enjoys Marmite-flavoured nachos.

Finally -

I was going to add a much longer Intro, which introduced literal waterfalls, and the grisly end of those who do not pay attention to warnings THAT ARE THERE FOR A REASON.  However - I saved that word till last - we'll be using that in a different blog, possibly working in another grim tale from Niagara, too.  Because you can have altogether too much of fluffy bunnies and rainbows.

*  I've no idea what these are except they're not good.

**  Actually I lied to protect his identity, because his real name is - Brittany.  Poor bloke.