Shell To Get Well

Or, More Precisely, The Opposite

As in, 'Shell to get very, very unwell'.  

     I know, I know, you're thinking 'What is the drunken moustachioed reprobate fulminating about NOW?'

     Would you believe Oil Price Per Barrel? because this is one of the metrics that Mopey Dick The Orange Land Whale has brought into focus.  I say this after trying to put forward those premier light entertainers Rooves and  Mertimer.  Art!

               
     The price per barrel of crude, across the globe, is one of the most basic foundations of economic policy and reciprocation, and has been since the Seventies.  In economic terms, it's like a slightly-variable baseline that may vary up or down A LITTLE but not much more than that.  If the $PB begins to spike upwards or downwards there is a problem in the market.  Art!

     This is the market value of Ruffian Urals crude, their premier Magic Black Treacle, and as you can see the overall value is not upwards.  It is downwards, also known as Status Quo Statistics, because - Art!

     Here is where Putinpot and his minions may begin to encounter trouble. This chart, thanks be to 'Joe Blogs' and his economic recounting, shows the current price of Ruffian Urals oil, which is all of $65.49 per barrel.
     'O what does this matter!' I hear you quaternate.  'As if!  Is it a tariff?'

     No.  No, it is not.  It's the market price for oil, which is determined by the free association of prices amidst the turmoil of demand and supply.  Bunker Midget Grandad a.k.a. Putinpot, cannot control this mechanism, much as he'd like to.  His economists and financial experts and slavish minions have all estimated the Ruffian budget for 2025 based on a barrel of Urals crude selling for $69.70 per barrel.

     Ooops.  Art!

         No, nothing to do with oil prices, this is a scan of The Comsat Angels, the best rock band to come out of the Eighties in the UK and i

     ANYWAY Harking back to May 2024, almost a year ago, the Ruffian economy was not booming, exactly, and more like moobing, which is the opposite, and they were trading oil at $85 per barrel.  They are now down almost $20 per barrel, and as at 31/3/2025 had hit $58.14 per barrel.  This is verrrrry bad news for the orcs since their economy is based, as we have often stated, on a Thin Mineral Slime derived from prehistoric forests.  Not only that, their overheads for extraction are very high indeed, as you would expect from oilfields in the Arctic tundra.  I believe their break-even point is $55 per barrel, so if they approach this or exceed it, Charlie Chipmunk Cheeks will be paying more to extract his Magic Black Treacle than he gets in selling it.  

Spurn, baby, spurn

     Joe posted his analysis before Mopey Dick the Orange Land Whale blew up the world economic congress with his tariffs, which is a whole Intro, if not two or three, on a separate matter.  However - that word again! - if things go pear-shaped across the globe in terms of economic interaction, the price of oil will fall dramatically and - O goodness! - who is going to be hit hardest first by any such consequence?

     

     Cheer up Dimya, it could be worse!

     Okay, okay, okay, it can't be much worse.  The orcs of Mordorvia, (yes there really is a Republic of Mordovia, go check it out if you don't believe me) you see, don't make very much of their own, their whole economy was based on extracting what they happened to be sitting upon at the time.  One of the kickers is that their petro-chemical technology was all built and run by the Global West, a resource they no longer have access to.  

Ooooops.

The Chinese are waiting in the wings to inveigle and take over.  They're already infiltrating Siberia whilst your attention is focussed on Ukraine.  Carry on, nothing to worry about, tra-la-la.

Beware bafunes!

     More of a smell than a shell, I admit, but once again, whose blog is it?

It's Not Cricket

For those of you whom are not located either here, in This Sceptred Isle, nor in it's environs abroad, more usually known as the British Commonwealth, the notion of 'cricket' can be rather an intellectual barricade to surmount.  Despite the arcane rules, cricket is widely seen as a touchstone of Absolute Determinancy, where fair play is the core of the game.  Art!

     This is the marque of the Marylebone Cricket Club - STAND UP FOR MARY! - whom do not lend their trademark for anything less than a great big pile of money.  Enter the Chapman brothers, whom utilised the MCC marque without paying any of the £150,000 that they needed to pay in order to use it in their advertising.  What were they advertising?  

        WHISKY!  The Devil's liquor.  Both brothers ended up doing prison time, and, irony of ironies, Lee Chapman had been a qualified financial advisor.  Wah wah wah, as the terminal sound effect goes.  As does, hopefully, he himself weeping into his pillow at night.

It May Be Late

Or it may not.  Kind of depends when and where you're reading this scrivel.  Art!

'Buckaroo' came out in the Eighties

     Conrad would contest that, as pretty much all of Dahl's output had a very dark side to it.  One can put this down to his being one of the Brylcreem Boys, where your best mate might have a life endurance of as many as three or four hours.
    

 If you are any friend of the blog then you are aware of the South Canadian actor John Lithgow, who partook in "The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai Across The Eighth Dimension" before staking a claim to public attention in a minor televisual entertainment called "Rocking Third Sun Variant Distance" or some such.  We need to publicise these people and promote class acting.  Let me edutainute you with screens that combine Thomas Pynchon with Philip. K. Dick.  Art!

     Honestly, he is acting here.  They totally didn't set him up and electrocute him.  With tongue electrodes as vouched for by their moonlighting dollar-hungry Ruffian experts of the KG

     ANYWAY enough of torture methodology pioneered by 

     ANYWAY AGAIN yes, John Lithgow.  Any chance of you promoting 'Buckaroo Banzai Versus The World Crime League' because if not I have the comic trade paperback?

In The Interests Of Being - Oh - Hang On A Minute

     It's Lithy again! whomever Namville is.  This will cement John's reputation back across The Pond, because his fellow thespians would gouge each others eyes out with a blunt melon scoop to gain kudos like this.  They may claim to hate King Charlie yet will be darting killing eye-beams of laser intensity at John, thanks to his reward.

      Rather more sincerely, it's nice to see one of the supporting players getting recognition.  George Harrison come on down!

Finally -

I made an Orange and Almond Loaf last night, no pictures yet but rest assured you'll get them later on.  It took a bit of digging to unearth the recipe since it wasn't in the cookbook index under 'Cake' or 'Loaf' or 'Orange'.  We got there in the end.  Art!