The Dying Swan Lake

This One Will Take Some Explaining
No, sweet thing, this is not Politics, it is History!  So there.  It hearkens back to the dim and distant days of the Cold War, when the Sinister Union was being run by a clutch of geriatrics-in-office, political hard cases who had come to power in the aftermath of the Second Unpleasantness and whose grasp of the levers of power was more akin to rigor mortis than anything else.  Art?

How to scare cats the Leonid Brezhnev way!*

     That chap in the ushanka fur hat is Ol' Leo, who kept on dictating, despite being progressively closer to Death's door after 1975, getting several inches closer each year.  He just wouldn't let go, until he croaked it in 1982.  Hay Pesto! another doddering dictator with male-pattern baldness hobbles into the still-warm throne,** which he's not destined to enjoy for long.  Art?

How to scare cats the Yuri Andropov way!

And strangle them, too!***

     Yuri shuffles - shuffles very, very slowly due to being quite ill - off this mortal coil in February 1984, but don't despair!  Another elderly, ill politician comes off their production line - what was his name again?  Oh, right, Chernenko.  They all begin to blur into one another, don't they?****  Art?

Nah.  The cat's aren't scared any more.  Sorry, Konstantin.

     He didn't so much shuffle off this mortal coil as need a couple of bodyguards to help him move at all.  That's what being a heavy smoker since age 9 does for you.
     By this time the wicked and eeeevil capitalist Western media were openly mocking this sequence of barely-animated coffin-no-longer-dodgers, including an hilarious, if tasteless, skit from "Spitting Image".  Art?

*****

     The thing is, in the Sinister Union they weren't good at dealing with surprises or novel situations - a Nazi invasion or intruding Korean airliner threw them all in a tizzy, until they could hammer out a bland, uninformative, lying, deceitful news bulletin.  
     So, all normal news broadcasts would stop in the event of The Glorious Leader's Much-Mourned Passing, and to fill in the gaping silence, non-stop classical music would be played.  For days on end, if need be.  Thus the perspicacious citizens of the Workers Paradise knew something was up, and that it wasn't good.
     Thus, in April 1985, when people turned their radios on, all they got was Tchaikovsky.  
     "Has Ol' Gorby choked it******, then?" people asked themselves, wonderingly, as he was a whole lot younger than the recent zombies.
     No.  Chernobyl had happened.

CAUTION!  More effective than robots but requires food and water

     So, if Russia Today suddenly starts to play non-stop Swan Lake and the 1812 Overture (but probably not The Rite Of Spring), there may be an announcement about Tsar Putin in the works ...

I Found It!
If you have been following the blog with any degree of attention and care, WHICH IS THE ONLY THING THAT WILL SPARE YOUR DESCENDANTS FROM THE URANIUM MINES, then you will know that I'd lost a piece from my 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle <sad face>.
     Well, this afternoon, there it was, on the floor at my feet <happy face>.  I honestly don't know where it had been nor how it came back - no doubt some wild and crazy adventure! - so I fell upon it with gratitude and - Art?

Whole again

     Five minutes later the whole thing was crumpled into individual pieces and back in the box.  No sentimentality, that's me.

Well, after accumulating a prison sentence of about twenty thousand years were Tsar Putin ever to get his twitching phalanges upon me, I think I'll now annoy Greece again.  Because the republic of North Macedonia - that's NORTH MACEDONIA - is going to be holding a Pride march in the capital, Skopje, which ought to offend the Greeks because it's 1) In North Macedonia and they hate hate hate anything that implies their Macedonia is under threat from irridentism, and 2) It's in North Macedonia and might get favourable publicity and 3) Even if they don't and it turns into a violent disorder, it's still publicity.

Entirely un-PC Greek reaction

     Time for breakfast!

Returning To The Theme Of HIGHLY DANGEROUS And Festivals
If you were paying attention to yesterday's post, then you'll have seen the brief mention of safety issues that were responsible for getting the Vestiville Festival cancelled.  Well, Your Humble Scribe being an inquisitive rascal, I nosied around and found a list of safety issues that Glasto has to contend with, and there's a lot.
     Out of caution, and that word "Copyright" being mentioned, Conrad will not merely copy and paste, nor drop in an image, but here's a rendering of the criteria.  Firstly - Art!

CAUTION!  Travelling cranes and laser battles can imperil crowds
(But look really cool on television)

"VERY HIGH RISK"
     'Crowd Safety' - naturally, when you have tens of thousands of reeling revellers, especially in the evening, when they're all trollied thanks to drink and exotic pharma, any surge or trips and falls can rapidly escalate into a giant human sandwich.  This is why you have security looking for any such thing in the first place.

In daytime they all sit quietly and soberly.

     'Contamination of the Water Supply' - rubbish, rain, human effluent, all in considerable amounts, can easily impact the groundwater.  Thus the organisers have to ensure that drinking water is potable, as cholera can easily offend.
     'Food Safety' - because you're talking about a muddy field, never forgetting that human effluent - not putting you off your dinner, are we? - with little to nil facilities to wash your hands, and none at all in terms of refrigeration in tents.  A ham sandwich, after festering for two days in clingfilm at the bottom of a rucksack, eaten with dirty hands - why do you think there's so much of that human effluent to go around?

To Let

     'Trips And Falls' - No, not that kind of trip.  The ones where you measure your full length in the noisome, effluent-laden slurry that is the ground after 1,000,000 pairs of boots have walked across it.

An incentive to remain upright

     All those tents with guy ropes, and people wandering around in the dark, not entirely sober or straight, no streetlamps; a recipe for faceplantings galore.
     'Hypothermia' - which is helpfully suffixed 'Getting soaked and being in the open', a traditional hazard of British 'summer' festival events.  Typically, if your festival attendance is not marked by the Atlantic Ocean coming to visit, you will end up with heatstroke.  The Pond of Eden - no happy medium where weather is concerned.

CAUTION!  British Summer Festivals are a Drowning Risk

     Well, we have gone well over the Compositional Ton, and I have two crosswords and two Codewords to tackle, so it's Chin Chin! from me.

*  Ten years penal servitude in the Gulag for Conrad
**  Another ten years.  Clocking it up, aren't we?
***  Fifteen years additional solitary confinement.
****  The death sentence.
*****  Another fifty years, then more death sentence, then ten years for good measure.
******  Resurrection in order to be executed again and again and again.  Conrad = bad boy.

In Soviet Union - The Food Eats YOU!

Of Course It Doesn't Really -
Unless - I mean, I presume the Ruffians hunt and kill bears and wolves, and even the Siberian Tiger of the taiga, which are quite capable of eating a human being, but they don't sit down to a meal of bear-burgers or wolf-wheaties, do they?  Do they?
     It was a silly title merely present in order to cash in on that craze people had of inverting a popular saying or meme, because the natural order of things ran contrarily in the Sinister Union.  Also -

CAUTION!  So fresh it may not be entirely dead.

     Your Humble Scribe isn't sure if this is a genuine Sinister or Ruffian food product, or a sly fake.  Whichever, it typifies the title for today.
     And here we return to the subject of Ushanka Show, Sergei Sputnikoff's Youtube Channel about the realities of life in the Soviet Union (I think we'll dispense with the hilarious BOOJUM! alternate of the "Sinister Union" for this post).  Art?

     Sergei, who is no apologist for the Soviet regime, explains that Soviet food was actually of pretty high quality, with very few additives and certainly no preservatives, as you would have found in Western (for which read "Treacherous Capitalistic American") food of that era.  The reason was a partial revelation about Soviet food policy: there was no need for preservatives because said food never sat on the shelves long enough to need them.  The instant stuff came into stock it was snapped up.  

Mayonnaise.  Russians are potty about mayonnaise, apparently.

     Ushanka mentioned a brand of Soviet mayonnaise that would only keep, unopened, on the shelves for three weeks.  Once opened, even if kept in your compact (for which read "very small bordering on tiny") Soviet fridge, it would only keep a week.
     The problem was, inevitably, that there was never enough of this food to go around.  Conrad supposes the situation is now reversed - plenty of food, but all stuffed to the gills with chemicals.
     Ah well.
     Yes, motley, you may go swimming in the pool.  We did remove those barracuda after working them up to fever pitch by throwing hand grenades in, didn't we?  We didn't?  Ooops!

An angry, angry barracuda

Past, O! Glasto
If you were one of the teeming tens of thousands who attended said festival, then you can congratulate yourself on having dodged a bullet this year, as the rains stayed away.  Of course, this simply means it's that much more likely to rain next time, so don't gloat too much or too long.


     Imagine how much grimmer and grimier the above would be if there had been 3 inches of rain on one day, which is summer weather the Allotment of Eden can easily manage.
     Okay, let us now look at one of the festival's less-likely stars, a chap who was central in that magnum opus of the Eighties, "The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai Across The Eighth Dimension", one Jeff Goldblum - yes yes yes he was in something with "Jurassic" in the title, be quiet, the grown-ups are talking.  It appears that Jeff is something of a jazz pianist, a skill he's kept quiet in the film world for decades, and which goes back to his teenage years.  Art?

Jeff not a fan of the Van Morrison approach to playing

     In fact, for the past three decades he's been playing with the <ahem> Mildred Snitzer Orchestra, a band with a name that I consider is probably not the one her parent's gave her at birth.
     Anyway, Jazzy Jeff, you read it here ninth or tenth, but you did read it.

A Festival That Never Was
No, we're not harking back to the Powder Ridge Rock Festival.  This is a news item ripped raw from today's headlines - well, since that sounds a little painful, perhaps eased gradually from yesteryon's sidebars on the BBC?
     I refer to a festival called "Vestiville", which was due to be held last week in Belgium.  Art?

Last year

     People were turning up at the gates only to find that it had been cancelled shortly before by the Mayor of the local town.*  He and his officials had toured the site to see how they were conforming with safety criteria, which they weren't: no proper stages, too few emergency exits and insufficient security staff, and that was after warnings to tighten things up and sort them out.  This gives you a rare glimpse into what's required at a festival quite besides the musicians and other performers.  One wonders what hoops Mister Eavis has to jump through to get Glasto off the ground.

Thunderbird 2 - for all your Festival needs!
(Okay that's a lie; we just haven't had enough Thunderbirds of late)

     I have mentioned the "Not A Cult" festival in passing, which can wait until another day, since we've had quite sufficient festivalue for one day.  It only got mentioned since someone I know is attending and playing.**

Speaking Of Thunderbirds -
Your Humble Scribe's mind tends to wander unless it's firmly anchored in a book or crossword, and yesterday was no exception, as I was sat pondering my computer monitor, wondering which words of wit and wisdom were going to be put forth today, and recalling The Hood, that spectacularly inept villain from "Thunderbirds".
     From there, my mind passed to "The Hooded Claw", who gets a passing mention in a Frankie Goes To Hollywood song.  He is also the chief villain in "The Perils of Penelope Pitstop".  Art?

Pen and Claw

     Penelope is always being captured by the Claw and subjected to some bizarre, complex and redundant piece of murderous machinery, which will kill her.  Then, the Hooded Claw, who is actually her guardian Sylvester Sneekley, will somehow acquire her money, unless his malicious plots can be foiled by a gang of seven midget gangsters in a sentient car - you are keeping up with all this, aren't you? although how her inheritance will pass to him would probably be shot down in flames by Legal Eagle.

Sylvester

     THC is one of those staggeringly inept villains who can barely put one foot in front of the other without shooting himself in the head.  Penelope, for her part, is staggeringly naive - or am I overthinking this too much?



*  Code for "I can't remember what it was, nor can I be bothered going to check" <the horrid truth courtesy Mister Hand!>
**  Sadly no, not Jazzy Jeff.