If I Were To Say 'Cart Rubble'

You Might Be Forgiven For Thinking Of The Below

If we can gently persuade Art with this cattle prod and get him to stop sucking the good stuff out of that spent nuclear fuel rod -

     In fact I would like to point you towards that classic 'The Two Ronnies' sketch where one Ronnie, being the Barker, comes into a hardware shop to purchase goods.  Art!

     The proprietor gives him what he asked for - 'Four Candles.'

     Except no.  Art!

     What he wanted were "Fork 'andles.  'Andles for forks."

     Just so here, for we are dealing with 'Car Trouble' and NO nothing to do with the song by Adam and the Ants, whom Your Humble Scribe could never stand in whichever iteration they came.

     Onto the first part of the story.  Art!

     Our narrator described herself as a 'chick nursing student', hereafter CHINS, who was intimately familiar with vehicle repair and maintenance, not least thanks to her stint in the South Canadian army.  She came back from a 6-month tour in a hot sandy place and performed maintenance on her truck: oil, air and fuel filters were replaced; checked the fan belt; drained and exchanged both oil and radiator; checked the battery; checked the brake pads and swapped a winter survival kit for a summer one - no mention what the difference is between these two.  Extra water?  Art!

     ANYWAY the one thing CHINS couldn't do was balance her tyres, so she took her truck along to an enterprise called 'Les Schwab'.  Before doing this she went all-out - or possibly all-in - on her appearance, grateful to be able to escape her uniform after six months of sweating inside one.  Art!

     Two staff began to balance her wheels, and a third man got into her driver's seat and began making notes on a pad.  At no point did SCribbling Unctuous Mechanic, hereafter SCUM, get out of her truck or inspect anything, not realising that CHINS had stuck around in the garage and could see what he was doing (or, rather, not doing) thanks to large picture windows.

     Ten minutes later SCUM came up to her and informed that he'd done a 'free assessment' and discovered numerous safety issues.

• Fan belt needed replacing
• Oil and radiator needed replacing
• Brake pads needed replacing
• All filters were shot and needed replacing
• Wheels out of alignment, hence worn out and - guess what! - need replacing

    These rendered the vehicle unsafe to drive and he 'couldn't release' it back to her without $3,700 in repairs and replacements.  Art!

 

     CHINS recognised a scam when she was presented with one.  Other mechanics in the Comments explained that it's illegal for any garage to threaten retention of a vehicle, unless the owner refuses to pay and even then the garage has to take out a lien on the vehicle.  If it was genuinely unsafe the owner might have to sign a waiver acknowledging they knew their car was unsafe but chose to drive it anyway, covering the garage.

     'The manager is out for the day,' excused SCUM when CHINS inevitably asked for the manager.  Making sure he had enough rope to hang himself and be buried in a wrapping of it next day, she asked for a written quote, which he was happy to provide.  Art!

NO ACTUAL HANGING PORTRAYED

     We do have some standards.

     ANYWAY the fraud was now quantified and in print, with SCUM's very own signature upon the fateful sheet.  This was to be important in mere minutes.  You see, CHINS had gone outside to supposedly call a friend to come pick her up, her now being car-less and all.  In reality she had called the Sheriff's office, and a deputy said he'd be over right away.  Art!

     It didn't take long for the deputy to dig down into the fraud, given that even a cursory examination would reveal absolutely nothing wrong with CHINS truck.  Plus, the offence was detailed on paper, rather than being 'he said-she said'.  

     Just as SCUM was being led in handcuffs to be put into the back of the police cruiser, guess who showed up?  No!  Not Elong Tusk and his Dancing Dalmatian Dogs troupe.  The garage manager, who had really been out of his office and was now returning, just in time to fire SCUM and void CHINS tyre-balancing fee.

     Once again, proof that it is hugely unwise to judge a book by either it's dust-jacket or cover.  If CHINS had merely worn her camo duds, SCUM might still have a job.  Unfortunately.

ART!  Not that kind of - O never mind

     As is often the case with Youtube tales like this one - from 'Dark Fluff's stable - there was another equally interesting tale in the Comments, which will have to wait for another day.  I bet you can hardly wait.

Point And Laugh

Various NAFO Fellas and Fellarinas, as well as other folks like myself, have been posting on Twitter about the hilariously inaccurate orc and vatnik predictions from 24/02/2022.  Here's one that's been widely shared - Art!

     According to other viewers, she deleted the post after 24/02/2022 and blocks anyone who refers to it.  I re-posted it to her Twitter feed but, much to my disappointment, have not yet been Blocked.  Still, I am hopeful.

Waiting For The Other Shoe (Store) To Drop

Since I have now mentioned the contretemps between Iran and South Canada, I think it's apt to share a graphic that 'Jake Broe' put up on his vlog about the build-up in the Middle East.  Art!

     These are various air and naval assets in the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, and there hasn't been a concentration like this since Gulf War One, hence the 'store' title rather than a single shoe.  None of the above includes any B2 stealth bombers, which are a kind of wild card; if they are due to be sent out on a secret strike mission, rest assured that Donnie Dorko will bray about it to the heavens before it happens.

     Also of note is the bottom port entry: WC-135R 'Nuke Sniffer' operating out of the South Canadian base at Mildenhall in the Allotment Of Eden.  Art!

     The real name is 'Constant Phoenix' but 'Nuke Sniffer' is far cooler.  One has to ask why this particular airframe is included in the TOE, because the Iranian's nuclear stockpile of enriched uranium was completely destroyed according to Donold Judas Trump.  The Sniffer is used to detect radioactive debris from nuclear detonations, or possibly radioactive debris from freshly-bombed enriched uranium sites?

     We shall see.  Jake himself may weigh in, him being a Nuclear Missileer of four years standing.

Point And Sneer

Conrad, as any fule kno, is immensely skeptical about cryptocurrency, dubbing it a 'scamble' and if that word makes the Collins Concise I want royalties.  Then there were 'NFT's, or 'Non-Fungible Tokens', which were a bizarre and brief flirtation with graphics that people couldn't really own but which they used the kid's college fund for (in South Canada anyway).  I think.  It was all petty stupid.  Art!

     "- you bought them in a state of mild insanity/greed/rank stupidity <delete where applicable>?"

     The article goes on at length about how NFT's are now effectively worthless, because they were only ever valuable when there was demand and perceived scarcity, without any intrinsic value themselves.  The two concepts that matey above ignored are: i)  Underlying worth, which is usually nil, and ii)  Long-term sustainability, which again simply did not exist.  Thus 95% of NFTs have 0 value.

     As with all investments-bordering-on-scams like this, the people who got in at the very start and immediately sold what they acquired will be the only ones who made a killing.

MAGA Still Does Not Understand Tariffs

These swivel-eyed loonwaffles all cheer Pumkinhead when he imposes 10% tariffs on every country across the globe.  They either do not or will not understand that tariffs are a sales tax, paid by the South Canadian businesses that import from abroad.  What do they do to recoup the tariff?  Why, they raise prices.  Art!

Monty Python got there first with Meaning.  

     Conrad is eager to hear this discussed on CNN or MNBC.  I bet you can hardly wait as well!

Finally -

Bring it on down, Ambrose!

"Senate, n: A body of elderly gentlemen charged with high duties and misdemeanours."

As depressingly true now as it was then.

The Glint Of OSINT

I Apologise A Little For The Jargon

In this intro to the Intro, I shall explicate about a few jargon terms and what they mean in plain English THE MOTHER OF LANGUAGES to avoid obfuscation*.  Okay, take it away.

SIGINT: 'Signals Intelligence' meaning information gained by intercepting or eavesdropping on your opponent's electronic communications, principally radio telecoms.  This classification didn't really exist before radios came into common use as it's verrrry difficult to eavesdrop telephones; not impossible, just difficult.  Art!

British WW1 telephone intercept kit

HUMINT: 'Human intelligence'.  Or what your spies glean, or informers pass on, or other members of Hom. Sap. tell you.  Potentially the least reliable means of obtaining data.  Philip Ingram of 'Frontline's Youtube channel, ex-MI6, said that HUMINT is classified as A, B or C and rated 1, 2 or 3, in descending order of reliability and accuracy.  A1, he said, with feeling, is rare.  Art!

OSINT: 'Open Source Intelligence'.  Or, whatever information you can gather from sources that are freely available to the general public.  Back in the Second Unpleasantness, British embassy staff in Dublin would subscribe to all the Teuton newspapers, which were freely available thanks to Eire being (nominally) neutral.  They would scour these for information that Nazi censors had either not noticed or insufficiently gutted.  Art!

     This type of INT is peculiarly relevant to Mordorvia.  Back in June 2024 they suddenly stopped publishing economic data, which had been heavily redacted yet still available for vloggers like 'Joe Blogs', who used it to create graphs and charts of how badly the Ruffian economy was doing, which is why they stopped publishing it.  Art!

     This headline is more of the same from only one day ago.  The Ruffian 'Unified Interdepartmental Information and Statistics System' has just deleted 168 data tables that it used to publish, because - that phrase again - "of how badly the Ruffian economy was doing".  Putinpot doesn't want anyone, including Ruffians, knowing how badly he has shredded the economy of Mordorvia.

     Which segues nicely into a whole slew of annotations I made on Jonathan Fink's 'Silicon Bites' vlog from yesteryon.  Art!

The long-form vlog he also has

     The title of his most recent vlog was 'Russia Is Closed For Business' and consists of a series of OSINT reports from various publications, which I will detail below, with the sources.

Vladimir Milov: Vlad is an ex-Energy Minister of Ruffia, politician and economist, now an opposition member in exile, who was interviewed by the 'Kyiv Post'.  Art!

     As reported by JF, Vlad describes the primary economic function of the Ruffian state as 'State War Spending'.  The old parameters which applied to a market economy no longer exist as Mordorvia moves to a 'Permanent Wartime Command Economy'.  In other words, guns not butter.  Or, insanely expensive butter than has to be kept in security boxes.   Art!

     Milov also stated that the apparent stability of the Mordorvian economy was an illusion, as the state did not exhibit any real growth; any temporary increase in the GDP during 2024 and into 2025 was the result of budget reserves being burned through to prop things up.  With reserves expended, the true state of the economy is becoming readily visible.  For more details read on.

PISM: The Polish Institute Of International Affairs, in case you were wondering.  They pointed out that the cost of borrowing in Ruffia is still high, at 15.5%, which is needed to combat inflation.  This stifles any prospects for businesses, who simply cannot afford to take out loans at this rate or pay back what they took out earlier.  An 'Ooops' moment.  Art!

The Wilson Centre: Which describes itself as a 'non-partisan think-tank' and if Art will do the honours -

     They pick up on the theme of high interest rates, and point out that they crater investment, drive down the available labour force, and cause very high uncertainty in markets that depend on predictability.  Not only that, the Mordorvian economy is now a '2-speed' variety, where investment in the military-industrial complex is ever-increasing from the state, whilst the civilian economy shrinks and there is nil private investment.

Moscow Times: Just to be clear, this is a publication from outside Ruffia, staffed by exiles.  Their take on the Ruffian economy is that financial reserves have been run down, corporate profits have tumbled, investment has tanked and there are warning signs of stagflation leading to a recession.  Art!

The Guardian: They focus on 'Missing In Action', meaning that the orcs sent to Ukraine do not return to the labour force in Mordorvia, thanks to being dead, or having deserted.  That musters a total of 1.25 million in terms of casualties, leading to a gross labour shortage that was 'only' 4 million in 2024 and which may be as high as 11 million overall.  Art!

Not strictly relevant but I couldn't resist

Reuters: They approach the problem as one of Ruffia becoming 'demodernised' thanks to a triple whammy of economic problems.  Number One is Expensive Credit, for which see above.  Number Two are Rising Taxes - not just an increase in tax but a dropping of the threshold tax becomes liable.  Number Three is the Vanishing Workforce, again.  One feels that the bad old days of the Nineties are returning, with a vengeance and a bullet.

     Ol' Jon has his own thoughts on the crisis, describing the Special Idiotic Operation as a 'Political and economic Ponzi scheme', where the promised infinite returns have proven to be illusory.  These economic mirages will collapse utterly if the war stops, since state investment will also vanish.  Art!

At the stroke of midnight -

From Ugly Duckling To Phoenicopteri

Conrad has held off commenting on the Ukrainian Fire Point 'Flamingo' missile, which was rolled out into serial production in 2025 with a whole lot of fanfare.  It's a monster of a missile, 30 feet long with a warhead massing over a metric ton.  Art!

With puny humans for scale

     It's had a lot of teething troubles, most especially as regards accuracy, and a Ukrainian spokesman explained late last year that they needed to make detailed TERCOM** maps for it over Ruffian terrain.  Otherwise it had to fly dangerously high to navigate to a target, meaning the chances of interception were greatly increased.

     Now, however - Art!

Before

During

After

     The target is the Votkinsk missile production facility deep in Ruffia, where they assemble Iskander missiles amongst others.  This is 1,400 kilometres inside Mordorvia, yet at least one missile got there successfully, evading any air defences en route - if there were any.  2026 just got worse for the orcs.

ENOUGH!  ENOUGH I SAY!

There I was, scrolling through the news feed, looking for a relevant picture, and seeing that half of the content was about Pumpkinhead and his whinging and boasting for 107 minutes live on television.

     Then - what do I see?  Art!

     I DO NOT CARE!  STOP PIMPING OSCILLOSCOPES!

     Sheesh, it makes me nostalgic for the days of Log Counting Software.

Here's One Conrad Can Get Behind

A news item from the 'Manchester Evening News', which, if Art can put down his lignite gruel 

          The image there is of the 'Warner Bros' store in the Arndale Centre.  It followed in the footsteps of Disney stores in selling overpriced plastic tat, meaning it didn't last and is now long gone.  In fact it's been gone for 25 years when it was only around for ten.  Point and laugh.

     ANYWAY what I wanted to mention was another opportunity lost to time.  Art!

Catch a bus from under the Arndale

     Yes, there was a troglodyte bus station within and underneath the Arndale Centre, which was horrid for passengers and I know because I was one of them.  It had no natural light, merely dimly ineffective fluorescents, and always reeked of diesel fumes, because - buses, lots of them, and insufficient ventilation.  It was so dark one had trouble reading whilst waiting for the PSV to exit the gloom.  Not missed one bit, and you can note it's design has not been repeated elsewhere.  Art!

Airy and bright in Babylon-Lite

Finally -

A quote from Ernest Hemingway and my 'QI Book Of Banter'

"Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk.  That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.!

     Quite!

*  No, I'm not going to go into this word's Latin roots.  Too much <hack spit> too early in the day.

**  TERrain COntour Matching

Conrad Is Supărat!

O So Supărat! Supărat To The Max!

You will, of course - obviously! - recognise the Romanian for 'Angry', which rather surprised me, as the Italian for 'Angry' is 'Arrabbiata', and now I understand why that spicy dish has that moniker, and the Latin <hack spit> for 'Angry' is 'Iratus'. 

     Here endeth the language lesson for today.  You can come out from behind the sofa.  Art!

     

     Meet the Remote Nuclear Detonator, the evil big brother of my Remote Nuclear Tormentor, because in this Intro I am going to be dealing with insolent and abusive Codeword compilers.  You and they may both have been happy sitting in a state of non-RNT or non-RND, assuming that Your Humble Yet Irked Scribe had given up fulminating on their ridiculously obscure or foreign solutions.

     NOT A BIT OF IT!

     Today I'm going to run through a list of the solutions that have tweaked my Tantrum Gland, getting them out of the way all at once.  I will be using my 'Collins Concise English Dictionary' for definitions, surely the most utilitarian of all Christmas presents evah.

FEINT: 'A mock attack or movement designed to distract an adversary, as in a military manoeuvre.'  It comes, for once, from the Old French* 'Feindre', meaning 'To pretend.'  Art!

To hide the secret redeployment of the Canadian Corps for the August 1918 Battle of Amiens, the British Army staged a convincing feint near Ypres, Flanders. A small Canadian contingent, including two battalions and wireless units, operated there to deceive German intelligence

     It's also used as the ruling between lines on paper, which is considerably duller.  Art!

     Conrad is perfectly familiar with both uses thanks to my profound knowledge of military history and my A4 notepads.  You might have struggled.

LIEGE: 'Owing feudal allegiance to a lord, or owed feudal allegiance to a lord.'  Conrad is pretty sure he'd read this word in one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's novels about the White Company, or perhaps in one of Ol' Tolky's works.  It went out of use a good half-millennia ago, except on the island of Sark, where it was only repealed in 2008.  Art!

Hark hark.  Sark.

     Not to be confused with the Belgian city of Liége, which is distinguished by the accent.

SYLLABIFY:  I did think this was a confection at first, until I realised that the last letter did not mirror the 6th letter, so no, it wasn't SYLLABUB.  Which is a dessert made from cream, sugar, wine and lemon juice and which has me curious now <absconds to look up the recipe>.  

     ANYWAY it actually means 'to divide a word into it's constituent syllables.'  So that would be SYL LAB UB thank you very much.  Art!

      HANG ON HANG ON HANG ON!

    I just dredged this up from the inky depths of my memory.  

 
In Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Unification II," Spock identifies achildren's toy (a dreidel-like device) brought by D'Tan as bearing "the syllabic nucleus of the Vulcan language"

Very nearly SYLLABIFY

FRIZZ: I am not convinced that this is proper word <checks> okay, okay, it is in my CCED, so I'll allow it.  "To form or cause the hair to form tight wiry curls or crisp tufts."  O!  Once again from French - 'Friser' meaning 'To curl'."  It still seems excessively slang in nature to Your Humble Scribe.  Art!

The normally hot Taraji Henson gets caught in a wind machine.  I think.

ERSATZ: Have we done this word before?  I have a feeling we have - another recollection from the inky depths.  Let me check.  AH!  Yes, but it was seven months ago - hey not bad in remembering that long back Steve**! - so I am going to cheat and merely copy the item wholesale.

ERSATZ: Another word borrowed from Teuton.  Thank you so much, compilers <hammers Remote Nuclear Detonator repeatedly> "Made in imitation or artificial" from the Teuton 'Ersetzen' meaning 'To substitute'.  One example of this was the Royal Navy's cruel and malicious blockade of the Teutons during the Second Unpleasantness, which forced them to substitute roast acorns for coffee or some such local substitution scheme.  Yuck.  Art!

Made from twigs, spit and ground cockroaches.  Possibly.

     I think that's enough of my frothing nitric ire for one Intro, as I've got another eight Codeword solutions to denigrate, which would take up the entire blog were I to type them out.  Maybe in March.  I bet you can hardly wait.

All The Single Ladies

Conrad will be glad when the Special Idiotic Operation dies on it's bottom and Putinpot is dragged screaming and crying to the ICC, but until then I continue to post on Twitter.

     Further to that, Conrad is no oil painting.  Art!

    I think that's large enough.  No need to scare small children and nursing mothers.  The thing is, I keep getting Followed by single ladies on Twitter, which you might think is welcome flattery for an aging curmudgeon.  Yet they all seem to be from MAGA and thus big fans of the Sagging Sepia Senile Sackbut, reposting nonsense like that below.  Art!

     In fact he bloviated about imposing tariffs on the entire world, the Moon, Mars, Mercury, the Andromeda Galaxy and Narnia.  The expectant suckers aren't getting any tax breaks, lest ye be unaware.

     It's blatantly obvious to anyone who reads BOOJUM! that I loathe and detest Donold Judas Trump, so why on earth are these ladies Following me?  I'm not on Twitter to gain a following, so they're not going to get Followed back.  Perhaps - perhaps they're just big fans of Thomas Pynchon and The Comsat Angels?
     

If All Flesh Is Grass These Must Be Bamboo

Which, as any fule kno, is the tallest species of grass there is.  Forgive my tortured analogy.  What am I wittering on about?  O I thought you'd never ask!  Art?

     You see, I have been watching the fifth season of 'Stranger Things', and will avoid posting any spoilers for those of you not yet acquainted with it.  Art!

     Conrad couldn't help thinking how much older the cast look.  The first season was set in 1983, and this one in 1987, so yes, you'd expect them to look a little more mature.  It wasn't until I checked the date of the first season broadcast that things fell into place - 2016.  TEN DOG BUNS YEARS AGO!  

     By all accounts this is the last season, and yes they ought to put it to bed, going out on as high a note as possible, because once again the cast age in real time not Hollywood time.  I have spoken

Typing This On The 4th Anniversary Of The SIO

That is, 24th February 2026.  I like to get ahead of schedules.  

     ANYWAY AGAIN I just thought to update you on this geezer.  Art!

     This is Igor Konashenkov, the official orc MoD spokesman for the SIO back in February 2022, and who was chirpy and upbeat when presenting the official narrative.  For the first three days.  After that, as Big K. observed, he became much more sombre.  He stopped giving briefings late 2023 and reportedly resigned from his post in May 2024, in order to spend more time with his bottle of vodka.

     Now, I am going to post a couple of graphs courtesy of the very excellent 'Covert Cabal' over on Youtube.  Art!

Total 10,626

Total 2,119

     Net loss over 4 years = 8,500.  FYI, the T-55s are at least 45 years old, and more probably 50 or 60 years old.  The T-62s ended production 6 years before the T-55 and again, are at least 50 years old.  The T-64s have not been resorted to much because of their awful unreliable engine, which have not been improved by being stood around outside for 35 years, nor by their autoloader, which tended to load crew arms and legs into the gun breech.  The T-72 has been used up to the tune of 2,000 because it was a reliable, decent model that could be upgraded and wasn't as long in the tooth as the previous three tanks mentioned.  The T-80 is nearing extinction as they are no longer being produced, due to being a lot more complex than the T-72 and when that 134 are gone, they are gone.  Art!

As was

     In reality, there are a lot fewer than 2,119 tanks available, as all the good, mediocre and poor ones have already been salvaged, repaired and renovated and what is left would cost more and take longer to renew than making a new tank from scratch.

     Being aware of this might be why Igor felt the need to breakfast on a pint mug of 100% Standard in the morning before quitting altogether.

    Hmmmm we are well over Count so I'm going to stop here and watch more weirdness unfold in Hawkins. Chin chin!

*  And not Latin, hoorah!

**  Steve: responsible for memory here at the blog.