Do You Want Your Apocalypse Boiled, Fried Or Mashed?

By Now, You Ought To Appreciate That Conrad

 - is a sucker for zombie films and other varieties of post-apocalyptic entertainment  One reason you find so many PA zombie films is because, the apocalypse having already taken place, they get to imply it with a few props (smashed store fronts, a burned-out car, shopping trolley on it's side).  Throw in a few extras getting paid in all-you-can-eat pizza and non-brand Coke, and there you have it: the end of the world for $50,000.  Art!

     I have a soft spot for this DVD because it was the first one I managed to play on my stand-alone DVD player.  Old dog new tricks doncha know, the trick was to selec

     ANYWAY that's an example of a cheap and cheerful PA film trope.  Other, more ambitious, projects might establish the pre-apocalyptic world, or merely have you the audience assume that everything before the crisis was boringly normal.  In some cases Doomsday arrives off-screen - horror films being notoriously cheap - and the film only deals with the aftermath, which is where the 'post' of 'post-apocalyptic' comes in.  Art!

When method-acting the Human Torch goes too far

     "28 Days Later", where The Infected are not zombies per se, but are definitely one of the decorations in a PA landscape.  In some entertainments you get the whole preamble, then an apocalypse and what comes after.  Art!

     This is the excellent Ruffian series 'To The Lake', and that Cyrillic title is 'Zpidemiya'.  No zombies, just an epidemic of a disease so virulent that it makes Covid look like a mild case of the sniffles, with something like a 99% mortality rate.  The first season simply couldn't be made now; it has Ruffian civilisation breaking down, venal police as criminals in uniform and an army quite happy and willing to mass-murder civilians.  Tellingly, Season 2 was shot and completed by September 2021, before the You Know What began, and it seems to have toned down The Evil Authorities and gone off at a tangent from Season 1.  Art!

"Sergey was going to get that last Pokemon and NOBODY was stopping him"

     All of the above, obviously - of course! - is a cunningly phrased preamble to a real life disaster taking place in Ruffia right now as I type.  Once again, not zombies, nor pandemics, but this is what Konstantin of 'Inside Russia' calls an 'economic tsunami' that is no longer imminent: it's happening right now.  Art!

"Deep Impact" renders New York State only fit as a fixer-upper

     Unusually, I am going to be deriving this information from a Youtube vlog new to you: Jason Jay Smart.  Jay is able to call himself 'Doctor' if he feels like it thanks to a PhD.  He's fluent in Ruffian, Ukrainian, Spanish and English and is persona non grata in Mordorvia for these past 15 years because he's anti-Putinpot.  His topic in this vlog was the collapse of the Ruffian banking system, concentrating on loans, defaults and (il)liquidity.  Art!

     This is the banner and HQ of the Ruffian Ministry of Internal Affairs, known as the 'MVD', who run the Ruffian Police, Migration, Drugs, Traffic and Investigations.  They are the 900,000 uniformed gopniks who keep Putinpot's rule a-running.

     Here an aside.  During the Cold War, and especially in the early decades, the MVD and KGB were at daggers drawn, mutually antagonistic and always seeking to do the other down, because they hated each other far more than the decadent capitalist West.  The KGB, which became the FSB, came out on top.

     ANYWAY ANYWAY so why is this here in an Intro about Modern-day Mordor's terrible economic situation?  O I thought you'd never ask!

     Because they want to make it illegal for banks to issue personal loans to customers.  Art!

     You might be wondering if that's a typo.  No, it isn't.  The MVD wants to make it illegal for banks to give their customers personal loans, a function that is one of the most basic financial activities of banks.  Their reason is 'To prevent banks from being scammed'.

     Oddly enough, every other G20 nation has banks that offer personal loans, and exactly none of them are making it illegal to loan money out.

     Gasp! I hear you react, could it be - is it possible - perhaps - maybe - is the MVD being Ruffian with the truth?  (what the rest of us call 'lying').

     Yes.  Art!

     Jay stated that 2 million Ruffians have stopped paying their credit card bills, which exposes the banks to very high risk of losses, hence the clamp down on issuing personal loans.  Nor are these loans for anything frivolous.  The amount of disposable income the goblin legions have is very limited, as in the cities they have to fork out 75% of their salary to pay rent or mortgages.  So, if they want to purchase a washing machine or fix their Lada, a loan it is.  Art!

"It was this or carry a wounded mate on a stretcher"

     If this legislation does go ahead, the minions of Mordorvia will need to be interviewed by the police to explain exactly why they need new radials on their car, or that the fridge door cannot be gaffer-taped together any longer, or a plumbed indoor toilet is needed because the cesspit outside overflows weekly.

     Believe me, we've only just gotten started on the Miseries Of Mordorvia.  Why, I bet you can hardly wait.

"The War Illustrated Edition 209 22nd June 1945"

Conrad is beginning to wonder, because we're up to Volume 9, the war has less than two months to run, and yet there is a Volume 10 to get through.  One wonders if it's going to be a run through the various high and low points of the war in chronological order.  Art!

     Proof that the war in the Far East was still raging.  The first picture shows Ghurka paratroopers preparing to drop and secure the mouth of the Rangoon River, which they did.  I know the Japanese were fanatical and maniacal and desperate, but hearing the war-cry "Ayo ghurkali!" in close proximity, followed by the sssshring of kukris being unsheathed, would have depressed them, rather.  Below that, to port, you have Japanese vandalism at work, going by the principle 'If we can't have it, then nobody can'.  To starboard are 14th Army troops on the assault, and at bottom a group of grateful Burmese, thankful that the flag of Nippon has gone.

Doggedness a.k.a. O.C.D.

     You may recall that Conrad has intermittently, for the past couple of years, been trying to identify the author and title of a couple of Young Adult novels he read back in the early Seventies.  One concerned a local conspiracy of animals that agreed to communicate with humans, and the other was about a small group of teens who survive the end of the world.
     Google is not your friend with terms as vague as these.  Art!

     This is a snapshot of "British writers of young adult literature"which runs to 92 entries, each of which needs to be studied and any books mentioned checked out.  I cannot cross them off, so will need to create a Notebook page and mark them off.  This is either thorough or stupid or both simultaneously.

This Is Hubris

Conrad was searching for a small pictorial article because we are well over count, and what did his liverish and jaundiced eye espy?  Art!

     But but but - what about his very best mate Elong Tusk?  What if his fee-fees - not to mention his stock price - are hurst?  Wicked wicked Donold.

     Elong does seem to have learned his lesson from bankrolling Donold during the election to the tune of $250 million, in that once Donold has gotten what he wants out of you, then it's 'Who are you again? and why are you annoying me?'.  That high-pitched whining you can hear is the world's smallest violin playing just for Kaptain Ketamine.  Tee hee!