How Close Can I Skate To Tastelessness?

Pretty Close, I Dare Say

This is the Intro I was going to write, before catching up with Pink Floyd and 'Interstellar Overdrive', amid questions about gender equality aboard United Planet's spacecraft, which is a rabbit hole for another day.  Art!

     Up until 10 minutes ago Your Humble Scribe knew nothing about this song and cares less than I did 11 minutes ago, except it might attract a few curious visitors.  What I was going to lead with was a film.  Art!

     As you may guess from the poster, it's a horror film, made in 1982 on a budget of $35,000, which would possibly cover the catering budget on a film nowadays.  The Monster Of The Piece, Belial, is carried around in a (locked) wicker basket, hence the title.  'Basket Case' was successful enough to spawn - apt noun there, Conrad - not one but two sequels.  So some of you are still human - no, sorry, that's 'The Thing', isn't it?  So some of you went to see it.

     I am now going to quote from my 'Brewer's Dictionary Of Phrase And Fable' for two reasons.  Firstly, it ups the Word Count.  Secondly, it defines the term and where it comes from.

"Basket Case, A.  Originally, a soldier who had lost all four limbs.  Hence, generally, a person who is mentally unstable or unable to cope emotionally.  By extension, the phrase is also sometimes used of a bankrupt country.  The image is of someone unable to support themself physically."  Art!

     Taken from the Coen brothers cruel comic Western montage, "The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs", and yes, you have seen that actor before, as the hoggish Dudley Dursley in an obscure series of films about 'Larry The Potter' or somesuch.  No, he didn't make the near-ultimate sacrifice in Method Acting, it's all done with CGI.

     ANYWAY that definition about 'bankrupt countries' is the lead into what I really wanted to go into in this Intro.  When Joe Blogs lists countries in the G20 with the worst economies, Argentina and Turkey usually top the list, especially when it comes to inflation.  Of course - obviously! - now that I need a chart, I cannot find it, so allow me to put up a extract.  Art!

     Bear in mind that the average for the G20 is around 4% and in Perfidious Albion it's all of 3.5%, which figure has a few pundits wearing sackcloth and ashes because of how devastating it is <amused snort>.

     You might well regard both the countries above as economic basket cases, which is fair comment - except their inflation rate is going down, not up.  Argentina's rate has dropped by 8%, and Turkey's by 0.25%.  So, what of Modern-day Mordor?  You have to look at their statistics in the G20 classification, as they have now long dropped out of the G8, which is now the G7, a fate so bad it has Charlie Chipmunk Cheeks weeping into his pillow nightly.  Art!

     The Thing is, bo- sorry, I'm doing it again, aren't I?

     The thing is, both Argentina and Turkey have hidden assets, as explicated by Jason Jay Smart.  Argentina has an annual subsidy from the International Monetary Fund of $2 billion.  Turkey rakes in a combined $50 billion per annum from tourism and remittances from the Turkish diaspora abroad.  Ruffia has neither.

     The reason I put up the inflation data for Ruffia and Italy is because 1) the Ruffians are lying about their inflation rate and 2) Their self-proclaimed target is 4% and 3) Pre-Special Idiotic Operation, the two countries economies were on par with each other.  The real Ruffian inflation rate is at least 20% and possibly as high as 40%.  Art!

Ruffian economy now on a par with Sicily

     What's that, Mister Budanov?  You have a comment to make?  Go ahead!

     You may be wondering how.  Well, if Lindsey Graham, South Canadian senator, gets his bill approved, then any nation trading in oil or gas with Mordorvia will be hit with 500% tariffs.  This would immediately result in India and China cutting all imports from Ruffia, and bang goes 80% of Mordorvia's export market, which would cancel out a quarter of their entire GDP.  Art!

Lindsey combines a slavish devotion to the Tangerine Toad and being pro-Ukraine

     Then we come to Big K of 'Inside Russia', and his detailing of prices used to calculate the Ruffian inflation rate, the so-called 'Borscht Basket'.  Art!

Now a luxury item

     The price of cabbages has increased by 57% and they now demand ₽75 per kilo; onions are up 87% and potatoes, the primary food for most Ruffians, have now trebled in price to ₽100 per kilo, thanks to both inflation and poor harvest yields.  The Kremlin is now blaming Ruffians for not having allotments and growing their own crops.  Art!

     Kind of hard to have an allotment bigger than a flower pot here, doncha think?

"No Man's Land" By John Toland

I have finished this, which was a worthy effort by Ol' John, BUT and you knew that word was coming, Conrad does have a few reservations.  Art!

     Except it's not the definitive version of 1918.  Fair play, he does go into the utter chaos and anarchy reigning on the Eastern Front as the Bolsheviks came into power.  You don't get more than a few paragraphs about the Italian Front, the Salonika Front and the Allied advance into Syria, where the Ottoman forces were routed.  Also, accounts of combat on the Western Front abruptly end in early October, and the last quarter of the work is taken up with the political events, which are deeply, profoundly boring.  

     Consequently I have dug out Peter Hart's "The Last Battle", which focusses exclusively on the Western Front.  It's also some two hundred pages shorter than Ol' John's book and in his Preface he warns that he will largely omit all that tedious politicking.

"The War Illustrated Edition 209 22nd June 1945"

More of montage.  Art!

     Blatant terrorism, which the Teutons enacted to make the Dutch hurry up and  surrender.  They had carried out the same tactics versus Warsaw in September 1939, again to speed up the surrendering process.  What lovely folks they were.  Art!

     Opinions differ as to whether the five-day delay helped the BEF firm-up their perimeter at Dunkirk; it certainly didn't harm it.  There is an excellent photo of the aftermath, when the garrison had surrendered, which I cannot find, so this next will have to do.  Art!

Ugh

Conrad passed a bus shelter advert on his way into Lesser Sodom a couple of hours ago, and had time enough to think "That sounds disgusting".  Art!

     As you may be aware, Conrad is not a fan of adding chocolate to anything in order to make it more palatable.  Chocolate-flavoured Christmas pudding?  No thanks.  Nutella on a crepe?  Get out of here!  Chocolate-chipped croissants?  Just let me get my gun.

     The business entity that thought it a good idea to use 'Shaken Udder' as their brand name also needs a wake-up call, because, again, it sounds disgusting.  Don't worry, I have taken notes and when I take over they'll bitterly regret creating anything so vile.

They Still Stand

This list goes back a full 10 years and is still valid today.  I came across it whilst looking for Wally the Weasel.  Art!

Blog Rules
Since there seem to be more people than normal reading BOOJUM!, I would just like to re-iterate a few of the rules in force here.  These are not up for negotiation.

1. The films of John Carpenter are documentaries, apart from "Dark Star"
2. Doctor Who is a re-enactment of things that have really happened.
3. America does not exist.  Instead there is only South Canada
4. Vulnavia is occasionally mentioned
5. Film reviews are plunged into with reckless ignorance
6. No swearing; "Dog Buns" is the official BOOJUM! swear
7. No politics, religion and most especially no sport.
8. The Metro is a lying chip shop wrapper
9. First Bus are easily the most evil entity on the planet in the galaxy

     Number 9 needs to be updated with "Bee Network" but as for the rest?  They still stand.