Better Known As 'RADAR'
You've been free from Conrad's usual content about the Big Orange Oaf Himself and the woes of Mordorvia, which both now come screeching in from the east.
Of course - obviously! - we cannot simply arrive at this narrative destination, we need to get there in proper BOOJUM! style, which is to say tangential and elliptic. Art!
Actually, they grew to hate it, as it was the only song of theirs that anyone ever bothered to talk about. I don't know if they got mellower with age about it, like Jeff Beck and 'Hi Ho Silver Lining'.
ANYWAY let us now cover 'Radar Men From The Moon' because I recall the name from decades ago. It's one of those verrrry cheap film serials that used Californian back lots to represent the Moon, and California, as budgets were miniscule. The idea was that a short clip of this film would be played before the main feature, ending on an overhanger, since they couldn't afford cliffs. Art!
Sorry to be a buzzkill but there is no radar inherent in the men from the Moon, whom are determined to emigrate from the Moon to Earth, spurning things like visas or passports. The story behind the serial is more interesting than the serial itself, which we may come back to. Art!
Hmmmm. Please welcome 'Radar', the Beanie Baby Bat, a plush toy from 1995. Conrad is unsure what species of bat it is but would like to point out that 'Radar' uses the emission of electromagnetic radiation in the very short wavelengths, so this Beanie Baby is implicitly toasting everything in it's flight path with high-energy beams. Which is not remotely like the sonic reflection system used by bats in the real world. Sorry for more buzzkill. Art!
From the television series 'M.A.S.H.', nothing to do with tubers, everything to do with being a 'Mobile Army Surgical Hospital'. Radar was apparently gifted with near-supernatural abilities of anticipation and prediction, turning up before the Colonel realised he wanted Radar, providing exactly what was needed and even completing sentences at times. Not only that, he shared a bat's ability to detect sounds at a distance, hearing incoming casualty-evacuation helicopters long before anyone else.
Well now, pilgrims, let us abruptly change tack and head for darkest Mordorvia, dark thanks to the huge plumes of smoke hanging over this infernal region. Art!
That's Kaledino and Utinsk Zavod, during and after they'd been paid a visit by Ukrainian drones. In case you were wondering, yes, these attacks are causing horrendous financial problems for the orcs and their masters. For one thing, about $5 billion - not rubles, dollars - of inventory has been destroyed, with Wildberries proudly stating that they aren't going to compensate anyone because the losses come under force majeur, so they're not legally liable. One furious entrepreneur who lost ₽76,000,000 in stock was offered ₽138,000, or 1/556th of his total loss. Over the course of two weeks, WB have lost over one-eighth of their total warehousing space, and cannot hire or lease any more warehouse space in Ruffia, as nobody wants a Firepoint 1 delivered with prejudice. Art!
Sarapul the flammabul
That may well be the 'why'. How are the Kozaky able to repeatedly hit warehouses, some of which are well over 1,000 from Ukraine's borders, with apparent impunity?
O I thought you'd never ask! WB (and now Ozon) warehouses share one specific aspect with oil refineries: they are enormous static targets that can be ranged to the millimetre. Unlike refineries, they have no defences at all, not even a draping of nets or Strategic Tyre Decepticons, and their products seem especially flammable, with a totally inadequate sprinkler system. If they ever had one installed; fire extinguishing is expensive and orcs are cheap. Art!
Courtesy 'Oka Gora'
OG has used open-source intelligence, meaning stuff that anyone can get access to (usually involving money switching hands), to plot the locations of Ruffian radar systems. You can see the exclave of Kaliningrad, the old network along the Belarussian and Ukrainian borders, and the enormous emphasis put on the protection of Barad Duh (Moscow if we're being formal). Whatever has been sent there is depriving another region, usually in the provinces, of that same resource. Art!
These red dots are S-300 and S-400 surface-to-air missile systems, with the green circles indicating how far out they can reach. The Kerch Bridge is well-represented, as is Moscow, once again. However - O that word again! - there are significant gaps in the system with areas not very well covered. Art!
Finally, the Pantsir SAM and gun system, a short-range asset that is quite as dangerous to Ruffian apartment blocks as are Ukrainian drones. There are clusters at Kerch, Rostov, in Belgorod and - of course! - Moscow and Saint Petersbug, and again more along the old border lines. The rest of the country? Not so much. Which means that Ukrainian drones and missiles can infiltrate to target without much risk of interception. When this is achieved with the enormous, noisy, the-opposite-of-stealthy 6 ton FP-5 'Flamingo', the Ruffian radar net is, to borrow an South Canadian euphemism, 'compromised'. Art!
'PANTSIR S-1, NATO reporting name 'PANTS'. Field tested against apartment blocks, oil tanks and supermarkets.'
Well, now we've got that out of our system, time to box up the Sunday Stew.
And begin another Ginger Beer Brew, this time from a recipe from my '1,000 Recipe Cookbook', which includes Cream of Tartar, purpose unknown.
'Shackled To A Corpse'
I know this happens to Tuco in "The Good, The Bad And The Ugly" but BOOJUM! is looking in a different direction, notably Nick Lloyd's "The Eastern Front", which I recently finished. He over-eggs the pudding by covering the Italian Front, which Your Humble Scribe deems entirely separate. Doubtless there are letters being written to 'The Times' about this by retired colonels. Art!
The usual reference is to Austria-Hungary, which by mid-1916 had so much of the stuffing knocked out of it that it's units on the Eastern Front had to be 'corseted' by Teuton ones, lest they either desert before combat or disintegrate on combat.
The Teutons had been promised one million tons of grain deliveries in the Treaty Of Brest-Litovsk, but by the beginning of June had only received 130,000, partly because the most sophisticated methods the Ukrainians had of reaping grain are seen in the photograph above. Grain harvesting is a time-critical job; if the harvest isn't brought in it will rot on the stalk. Germany and Austria-Hungary desperately needed that harvest to counter the near-famine conditions suffered thanks to the Royal Navy blockade.
By The Way -
I checked on Cream of Tartar and it helps break down sugars into simpler sucrose variants, helping the yeast to convert them. Art!
DO NOT CONFUSE with the similar 'Crimean Tatar', Art!
These are natives of Krim who cordially detest the orcs and wish them gone, preferably by conversion into simpler forms of life.
More Ungentle Shoeing
I see Billy Bonespurs has been down to his usual standard of invective and stupidity. Art!
Also looking more like a shambling zombie than ever. If he ever starts mumbling 'BRAINSSS' then it will be a toss-up as to whether he's one of the walking dead or simply jealous that he lacks them.
And O dearie me, that item above means I cannot enter South Canada, since ICE, DHS, the FBI and the Shriners will all refuse entry based on my past 5 years of social media involvement. I also mock the Bunker Midget, who seems to have a problem with his right arm of late.
Finally -
I am enjoying another pot of my VERY expensive Willard's 'Margaret's Hope' loose leaf Darjeeling, which must be at least 4 years old by now. Yet still full of flavour. Good job, it's Day 65 of Sober Summer. Chin chin!
