'Tis Most Peculiar

So I'm Gonna School Yer

This only works if you have a short "A" in "Peculiar".  I also apologise for being horrendously common in using 'Yer' instead of 'You', since we here at BOOJUM! are nothing if not refined <yeah right you Z-grade movie monster addict! - the horrible truth courtesy Mister Hand> poetic lang - has that traitor Mister Hand been at work?  BRING ON THE SURGICAL - actually don't bother, I am rather attached to him* <heavy despairing sigh>.

     Where were we? O yes.  Steely Dan.  Conrad only came late to appreciate this South Canadian combo, who were focussed, with awesome determination, on creating a sonic landscape of elemental proportions.  Art!

Which one is a Grumpy Young Man?  Only you can tell!

     Upon hearing them on the airwaves, you may be unaware of the 110% dedication that they put into creating songs, and if you go onto Youtube and search for "Peg" then you will discover what pains they went to.

     Which is a bit tangential.  What Conrad wants to refer to is a track of theirs called "Bodhisattva" for no other reason than it stuck in his head.  Art!

     There you go, a cover so appallingly bad that Steely Dan themselves mocked it relentlessly.  There are other worse ones o

     ANYWAY that track.  Conrad, whom we all know to be a curious character - okay okay okay nosy - wondered exactly what it meant.  Cue the Brewer's Dictionary Of Phrase And Fable - "One whose essence is enlightenment".  More than that, this is a person capable of reaching Nirvana, but whom refrains from doing so in order to help others.  What you might call an earth-bound spirit.  Looking to help the mortals.

     We have moved on from "Tormentor", Conrad's long-form fiction entry for NANOWRIMO, that dealt with the supernatural, but if you recall clearly, our protagonist Louis McMahon had been mentored by a beneficent spirit called Yvonne, who was making amends for her fearfully shallow mortal existence in the entertainment industry (think television more than film, as this is Perfidious Albion not South Canada).

     SCCCRRRCCCCHHHH noise as the stylus dances across the record's surface.  Excuse me?  So Yvonne - imagine a well-sculpted blonde in her early thirties - is the Conrad-equivalent of a Bodhisattva?  Art!

     DOG BUNS!  That's the look I imagined.  Conrad now begins to wonder where the Coincidence Hydra and his imagination leave off.  

     Well, if nothing else it does underline the unadorned fact that today's title is - peculiar.

     Motley!  Bring me my pipe and slippers, I feel it advisable to do nothing deep or meaningful for the moment.  O and bring in the Dragon Fruit.  Just in case.

Puns By The Tuns

<taps finger warningly> No, not as in 'Tons', the unit of mass.  'Tuns' as in the barrel.  Do keep up!  For today we are looking at - Desert Beaver Observatory.  Yes, this is another of our series about South Canadian astronomical observatories, because we can, and some of them are either peculiar or interesting or both.  Art!

Possibly the site

     There are few images online for this site, which is not surprising, as beavers do not build dams in the desert, normally requiring a large body of water in the vicinity.  It is also a private institution, unlike most observatories, which are usually offsprings of the state university or similar.  The site is at Eloy, which immediately had Conrad thinking of "The Time Machine" because that's how his mind works.  Art!

     And in the field of minor planets <insert bad "The Expanse" pun here> Desert Beaver discovered 'Sughara'.  Art!

I have no idea

CONRAD IS! Very Cross Indeed

As you might well be if you were to try and solve Codeword puzzles that had ridiculously obscure solutions.  Really, I should refer several of these to the International Criminal Court.  I bet they have a Lexicographical Crime Unit <fantasises briefly about crossword geeks with body armour and machine guns> ANYWAY let us begin.

"ALLOTROPE":  YOU WHAT!  Are we all suddenly chemists now?  <sighs in weary resignation>.  Your Humble Scribe recalls this word, because - memory like a skip, remember? - it refers to alternative physical states of the same molecule, and the best example is carbon.  Art!

     That's the structure of the carbon allotrope diamond.  Diamond, terrifically hard stuff you can use to cut glass?  Also worn as personal ornamentation.  Art!

     There you have the carbon allotrop graphite, which is very soft and indeed makes splendid material for pencils.

"PHOENIX": O that's a devious one!  'PH' as the beginning of a word.  And 'OE' as the centre, and 'X' as the last.  Art!

     Inevitably this word has Greek roots, or wings, and 'Phoinix', which meant something about red-feathered birds, and there you get the fire analogy.  And if you don't believe me you can go do the research yourself.

"TSAR":  A gift of a solution!  However, Conrad will choose the Moral High Ground, mostly because there's an Immoral Flood coming quite soon.  This word is derived from the ancient Latin "Caesar", because Latin without a "T" confuses the Ruffians.  Art!

This picture has automatically gotten Conrad 15 years in a gulag

Finally -

You may skip this section if you like BUT THERE WILL BE CONSEQUENCES O SUCH CONSEQUENCES as we once again pontificate about the 'Special' Military Operation in Ukraine.  Art!

     Notice the blue arrows in the north, where the Ruffians - whom some are calling 'Orcs' - ran away when they couldn't get into Kiev.  RAN AWAY RAN AWAY ARE YOU FEELING SAD TODAY ah yes what subtle satire we resort to here!  Also, note that blue arrow north-west of Crimea; that's Ukes pushing down to Kherson in counter-offensives that the Ruffians are finding hard to deal with.  In other words, they are having great difficulty merely hanging on to what they've already got.  This matters because some Ruffian general, doubtless with a pint or two of vodka lining his innards, loudly declared that they (the Orcs) were going to take the entrie <hic> seesbord of the Yookraniens and reach Trnas - Trnenss - Trnsnstr -

     I think it was vodka.  If not and this stuff is legal and cheap, do let me know!

*  Mister Hand - my right hand!  The Kreplach traitor.

A Diet Of Flies

Not, I Have To Say, A Cuisine Conrad Could Go For

Your Humble Scribe is not sure where, exactly, this idea came from.  I was thinking of our Ruffian readers (yes we still have some!) who are fed a diet of lies - no, no, don't worry, I shan't stress you about Dimya's 'Special' Military Operation until 'Finally -' - from their media.  "NATO Atom Bombs Nunnery Full Of Orphans", "JFK Murdered Judge Crater", "Porridge Oats Are A Scotsish* Chemical Weapon" and the like.  Art!

     That's 'Krokodil', a Sinister-era satirical magazine which, predictably, took potshots at the West.  They could also satirise the Sinister state, getting quite close to the bone in a way that would see them getting a Novichok cocktail in today's Ruffia 

     ANYWAY we seem to have strayed a little from the beaten path.  Don't worry, it's a big path, it can handle it.

     Flies!  Yes.  Conrad is aware that some cultures have perfectly ghastly dining choices of their own.  Take the M8s, for example, with their binging on what they claim are 'escargot' but which are in real life DISGUSTING SNAILS.  I say blimey they're so slimy!  One of the most disturbing scenes in "Delicatessen" (a film I recommend unreservedly) featured DISGUSTING SNAILS, which in the future will be a valuable food resource according to the Michelin Guide's 2047 edition.  Art!

     Imagine getting home from a long day working at the Deuxieme Bureau, only to be told by your wife that 'Dinner's in the garden!'.

     Then there is that Phillipines delicacy so vile I'm not going to describe it.  It's so horrid it's making Edna feel ill.  And who is it who eats grilled tarantula?  O the Cambodians.  Yeah.  Not going to fight them for that delicacy.  Art!

<gags>

     ANYWAY enough of Conrad's dining discrimination.  A diet of flies, you say?  You would have to roast the disgusting things first, as eating raw flies is likely to turn your bowels inside out.  

     Let us abruptly skip to the desert wastes of North Africa during the Second World 'Special' Military Operation, because flies were a very real health hazard when raw and uncooked.  The Arabs had a saying: "When Allah made the desert it was not bad enough.  So he added flies."  These legions of loathsomeness found that human waste, rubbish, dead bodies and weaselnanas made for prolific breeding, and they came in swarms, liable to infect any open wound or unwary eater.  Art!

General Montgomery.  No flies on him.

     Conrad also has vague memories of a character in "The Sands Of Valour" mentioning an attempt by British army engineers to kill flies en masse with electrified wiring, which worked all too well, slaying them by the million, creating a disgusting stink and smoky reek that led to it being banned.  I cannot find any images of this on teh Interwebz and doubt it's the sort of detail that credible military histories will include.

     BUT!  You could make a fricassee with all those now-cooked flies.  I imagine they'd be all lovely and crunchy - air-fried, you might say.  A dash of salt, a modicum of pepper and Hay Pesto - dinner!

     Now, what was that about a Diet Of Wurms**?

INFor It

NO that is not a typo!  It is an hilarious pun, just you wait and see.

     Okay, Conrad was reading another set of Comments on a Reddit Youtube about Malicious Compliance and came across this one.  Original Poster was a crewman on a ship travelling between Cuba and Haiti, an act that irked the South Canadian Coast Guard.  Ooooh did it irk them!  Art?

     That sets the scene.  The Coast Guard tooled up and stopped the ship, getting all in the face (I have this argot down pat don't I!) of the crew and REFUSING TO LET THEM MAKE A CUPPA.  Whilst swaggering around with guns and helmets and flak jackets.  The British crew, not amused, decide to mock the Coast Guard, whose leader loudly declares that if he wants to search their ship for drugs, he Dog Buns! will do, and nothing they - what's that?  Check the bills of lading?

     These papers state that the ship is an 'I.N.F. carrier'.  I.N.F. as in "Irradiated Nuclear Fuel", also known as waste from a nuclear power station.  Collapse of stout party, Coast Guard depart at speed, incident over.  Art!

An INF carrier

     No "Tormentor" today, people, since we got to the end of it yesteryon.  Thus Your Humble Scribe only needs to hit 1,000 words, not 1.200, for those who were wondering.  And that Kreplach! BBC link is still dead.  I am officially very cross.  Very cross indeed  No, no, crosser than that.  Keep going.  Bit more.  Yes!  That cross.

HOLY DOG BUNS!

As you should surely recall, Conrad recently got a Thunderbirds alarm clock to replace his very, very battered old one, because I kept knocking it off the bedside cabinet.  Art!

     GREAT SQUEAKING BATS! is it loud.  There's no way anyone could sleep through this when it goes off.  Which is a good thing, right?

Finally -

As ever, we touch upon the real world here, and Tsar Poutine's SMO, so if you've had entirely too much of it already, feel free to KEEP READING.  Seriously.  Any skipping and there will be Consequences.

     I think the Ruffians lost another general today, or over the weekend.  To be honest, it's hard to keep track as they are dropping like <ahem> flies.  How do the Ukrainians know where they live so effectively? is a frequent question on Youtube forums, and whilst the Ukes are quite capable themselves, there are some very heavy hitters backing them up.  Art!

A.K.A. 'The Puzzle Palace'

     You may not have heard of this very shady organisation, which they're perfectly fine with, as they didn't officially exist for 25 years.  Their brief is to monitor, collect, process and analyse information for internal and external intelligence and counter-intelligence.  They specialise in the abbreviation SIGINT, meaning 'Signals Intelligence' or what they can pick up from radio intercepts, e-mails, text, phone calls, anything that's not human-derived (which is HUMINT or 'Human Intelligence).  You can bet your bright blue Wellington boots that they are eavesdropping on everything that the Ruffians are up to in Ukraine, and passing information on to the Ukes, who pass it on to artillery batteries or sniper teams.  Art!

Wowsers.  These South Canadians mean business!

     Tomorrow: GCHQ.

*  One feels their familiarity with Caledonia is lacking.

**  A real, serious thing you know.  Honestly.

Safety First. Or Was It Last?

Is There A Harold Lloyd Film Out There With This As A Title?

Quite possibly.  Shall we Google for it?  O go on then.  Art!

     Well well Joan Blondel.  Conrad's retentive memory scores a hit, which is always a wonder as my memory has all the organisation of a skip, and a skip that's been picked up and juggled by a Transformer before being dropped from height.

     As Conrad recalls, Harold was doing his own stunts in the above film, which was also carried out at height.  You can't see them, because they were deliberately out of shot, but there were safety nets below his precarious perching, just in case.  When filming finished they dropped a mannequin onto one of them, just to see what would happen, you know, morbid curiousity being a human trait.  It bounced straight off and fell to the street a hundred feet below.

     ANYWAY Conrad has to relate a tale from one of the interminable Reddit Youtube channels that he is Dog Buns! addicted to.  Art!

First aid kits

     The top one is a Ruffian FAK, the lower a Ukrainian, and you can tell how seriously the Ruffians take the lives of their soldiers from this.  The Ruffian dog lead might be a tourniquet, or a garrotte if you're really seriously in

     ANYWAY Original Poster said there had been a safety audit in his South Canadian workplace, resulting in the discovery of empty first aid kits and missing fire extinguishers.  A request was put in to replace these as soon as possible, at which point the 'unofficial' workplace boss Mrs. B. said no.  I think we all know what that 'B' stands for, gentle readers!

     OP then contacts his neighbour, who was a Fire Inspector for the city.  The Fire Inspector made a surprise inspection, and informed Mrs. B. that she needed to acquire fire extinguishers INSTANTER.

     Mrs. B. said no, and was extremely rude about it.

     You may be ahead of me here, but doing this to a Fire Inspector is A DOG BUNS! MISTAKE.  You realllllly do not want to mess with these people.  As Mrs. B. discovered 15 minutes later, when she was being removed from the building in handcuffs by the police.  The whole of OP's building was shut down for two days until they could be fire compliant.  Mrs. B. was fired, the business was fined, the official boss took early retirement - O and Mrs. B. was also sued.

     Moral of the story: a Fire Inspector is a horrible Hector.

Warned you

     Motley, time to pour petrol on the bonfire and barbecue a sausage or two!

Bah, that BBC links page is still refusing to load.  I shall have to do creative myself!

Bring Me A Bucket Of Popcorn

O joy unabated!  Further evidence of Conrad being a terrible human being, the BBC have turned on Comments about a ballfoot game between Manchester In The City (sp?) and Leads (sp?), where MITC won by four 'goals' to none - stop me if I get too technical for you - and there are thousands of comments.  Let us post an example:

R

Comment posted by Rich, at 19:35 30 AprRich

19:35 30 Apr

Liverpool win - media can't get enough. Over the top hyperbole. City win.....oh well. Not much on that. The media love in with the Liverpool is sickening bias.

     This is a constant allegation, that the BBC loves Team X, except Team X is always different in these threads.  Conrad honestly doesn't care, since he only reads these HYS for the citric comments.  Such as those which allege VAR - a video assist to the referees - is biased in favour of Liverplod, and that they consistently cheat.  Hmmmmmm.  Art!

This is about Conrad's level

Were I To Say 'Bok' -

You could be forgiven for thinking Conrad was referring to that premier dramamentary series 'Doctor Who', because -

Bok

     One of the designer's offspring kept the prop and put it atop their bedroom wardrobe, far braver than Conrad.

     ANYWAY you would be wrong, because I am referring to the Bok Telescope, a South Canadian astronomical instrument named after Bart Bok, him being an astronomer himself, based in Arizona.  Art!

Bok atop a rock

     The observatory houses a 90 inch telescope, which has the capacity for direct human observation of the heavens.  This would be all fine and dandy in a feeble 9 inch telescope, but is unusual in one of this size.  Art!

Telescope with puny human for scale

"Tormentor" Some More

We are very close to the end, I promise.

After that, Louis couldn’t get to sleep.  He sat on the settee and reviewed the past few weeks, silent until the sun started to come up.

               ‘Symbolic,’ said Yvonne, pointing it out. 

               He went to stand at the window, drawing the curtains on a new day.

               ‘Very symbolic.  Hey, you don’t need to hang around.’

               Yvonne shook her head.

               ‘Oh but I do,’ she sighed, coming to stand by him.  ‘Thanks to bond-and-bind.  All day yesterday when I was away from you I got an endless tugging feeling.’

               ‘Indigestion,’ he joked, then felt bad.  ‘Sorry.  Well, I guess you are now officially a classroom assistant.’

               ‘Only in term-time,’ she shot back.  ‘Holidays you and I will be hunting monsters.  I guess you are now officially an exorcist’s  assistant.’

               Louis shrugged.  Fait accomplit.  Better accept what you got, McMahon, because it ain’t going away, and neither is your spirit bodyguard.

               ‘Tell you what,’ he said, putting a companionable arm around her shoulder.  ‘You make me a cuppa and I’ll set the DVD to record Corrie, just for you.

               Yvonne beamed.

               ‘Deal!  See, you have mellowed a little.’

               Another shrug.

               ‘Not mellowed – changed.  I see the bigger picture now.’

     AND WE'RE DONE!  Thanks for being patient if you've read this far.  It really could have done with a sequel, don't you think?  Maybe when I'm redundant and don't have to work over a hot keyboard eight hours per day.

Finally -

Yeah, that bit of BOOJUM! where Conrad exercises his mind and meditates on matters military as regards what's going on in Ukraine right now.  For all that it may be fascinating to military historians and wargamers, it's a gigantic humanitarian tragedy with no end in sight.  Having said that -

     As you probably understand by now, Phase One of the conflict is over.  The Ruffian Thunder Run on Kiev failed dismally, thus the Ruffians have now railed all their troops from the north over to the east, where they are trying, without much success, to take the Donbas; this is Phase Two.  The Ukes have now been resupplied with Sinister-era kit from Poland and Czechia, replacing everything that they've lost, and because it's kit they're familiar with, it can go into service straight away.

     Phase Three will be when NATO-standard kit starts to arrive at the front lines, because the Ukes have to be trained in it's use first, as it will be totally unfamiliar to them.  We are talking about things like the Leopard 2, the Flakpanzer Gepard and the Feldhaubitzer 2000.  Also the M777 howitzer, which can reach into Ruffia itself with rocket-assisted projectiles when fired from Ukrainian territory.  So there is a window of vulnerability whilst the Ukes get trained up on this stuff.  Art!

     NATO equipment like this utterly trumps the Ruffians poorly-designed, badly-maintained and ineptly-operated gear, which their generals must realise.  The race is on.

What A Shock - It's A Nymph Osmosis Bloc!

Or Is It?

After all, you can't trust BOOJUM! to be honest or truthful about anything, especially not if lying brings in more victims visitors I meant visitors.

     I know you must be wondering if I've been at the cooking sherry already.  Of course not!  Sherry is disgustrous stuff and I wouldn't drink it even on a dare.  Did I ever tell you about the sherry-flavoured milkshake I once made?  The horror lingers on

     ANYWAY I am merely getting my retaliation in first, because today's title contains three more wretched Codeword solutions THAT ARE NOT AT ALL FAIR <mashes Remote Nuclear Detonator fiercely and frequently>.  I dunno.  Every time I vapourise an idiot Codeword compiler they go out and hire a replacement even more stupid, if that's possible.  Art!

     Let us proceed with the deed.

"NYMPH": A five-letter word with NO VOWELS?  How unfair is that?  Very unfair is the answer you're looking for.  Either 'A spirit of nature envisaged as a beautiful maiden' or a fly larva, take your choice.  Actually, looking at that page in my Collins Concise, there's an interesting word: NYMPHOLEPSY.  Not come across that before; it means 'A state of violent emotion especially when associated with a desire for something one cannot have'.  Ah.  Like Your Humble Scribe and ice cream.  Art!

"OSMOSIS": WHAT ARE WE ALL SUDDENLY BIOLOGISTS NOW?  In case you were unaware, this is the tendency for a weaker solution to dilute a stronger one across a semi-permeable membrane, which I well remember from Biology.  STILL UNFAIR.

Osmosis Jones.  It was a thing.

"BLOC":  'A group of people or countries combined by a common interest'.  Because using 'BLOCK' isn't poseury enough one presumes.  Art!

Bloc, Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell

     That's my blood pressure up again, time to stop before the red mist descends and the world loses another twenty-seven Codeword compilers.

A Bit Of Whimsy

Sorry, I've had this bit of doggerel going round in my head and it needs to be put down on paper or it will only keep going and getting longer.

I feel all sweaty

Like Shilpa Shetty

Eating spaghetti

On a jetty

And being petty

To her friend Betty

     There we go, expunged, so it won't keep getting added to.  I hope.  You can never quite tell what my mind is going to come up with next.

The Dogger Bank Incident

If you're in the mood for a little Ruffian-bashing, carry right on.  One of the biggest wars you've never heard of was the Russo-Japanese War, which ran from 1904 until 1905, where the Ruffians - Tsarist at the time - lost every battle yet won the peace.  Essentially the Japs ran out of soldiers whilst Ivan had only just begun to mobilise troops from European Russia.

     ANYWAY the Ruffians decided to send their Baltic fleet out to the Far East to take on the Japs, which meant they had to traverse the North Sea.  Art!

     Whilst at the Dogger Bank they encountered a fleet of British trawlers from Hull, whereupon some idiot screamed "JAPANESE TORPEDO BOATS!" as you naturally would (this is sarcasm lest you be unaware) and the Ruffians promptly opened fire.  Art!

     If this had been any other navy then those trawlers would have been rendered unto matchwood.  Fortunately for the fishermen it was a Ruffian battle fleet, so only one trawler was sunk and two crew killed, and this is after twenty minutes of firing.  The Ruffians did manage to shell one another and reported being struck by torpedoes, which is quite a feat as Hull trawlers lack this article entirely.  The whole event was notable for the appallingly bad gunnery of the Ruffians; one ship, Oryol, fired 500 shells without hitting anything.  Art!

Oryol

     The incident enraged This Sceptred Isle, which was bad news for the Ruffians since the Royal Navy outnumbered, outgunned and outskilled them.  Packs of cruisers stalked the Ruffians, who eventually agreed to investigate the incident and pay compensation.

     Food for thought, Tsar Poutine!

Laying On The Torment

If you recall, Luma and Yvonne had been paid a visit from 'Management', who had begun to take an active interest in our protagonist.

Yvonne caught on quicker than Louis.

               ‘When I helped to heal his arm, that’s taken as a bond?’

               ‘Mhm,’ nodded Michael.  ‘And when he helped to recharge your batteries, post-attack.’ 

               ‘Is a bond-and-bind serious?’ asked Louis.

               ‘Oh yes, yes indeed!’ said Michael, beaming.  ‘It ties the spirit to the mortal.  No Moving On until the mortal does.  A rare privilege, but officially sanctioned in your case.’

               Louis felt a sense of incredible unreality steal over him.

               ‘Let me clarify this.  I’m being told by an angel that I’m practically engaged to a spirit, and encouraged to hunt down demons.’

               ‘Messenger,’ tutted Michael, raising one elegant eyebrow.

               ‘Does this seem strange to you?’ asked Louis of Yvonne, who appeared similarly startled.

               ‘Of course it’s unusual, because people like you are so rare,’ explained the “messenger”.  ‘Anything else?’

               Only about a million questions!

               ‘Yes!  Why me?  Why can I interact with spirits when nobody else can?’

               ‘I can’t tell you that, Louis.  Privileged information.  Yvonne?’

               She waved absently.

               ‘Time to go,’ said the messenger.  A huge pair of feathered wings unfurled  from the back of his jacket, beat once and created a storm of wind.  ‘Sorry, couldn’t resist.’ The wings vanished, Michael winked and then vanished too.

     As I said before, what a wag that Michael is, hmmm?

Bring On "The War Illustrated" You Say?  Why Certainly!

Forgive the quality for this one, a tad blurry.  However I'm not going to go back upstairs in order to retake the photo and have to upload it again, so there.  Art!

     Here we go, from port to starboard.  First up are some Axis prisoners coming in, then engineers removing enemy anti-tank mines, which is a rather dodgy business if they've been booby-trapped to prevent lifting.  Then there's a patrol coming in.  Bottom port is a very disabled 88 flak gun; one tyre seems to have gone completely CHEAP CHINESE KNOCK-OFF, and the crew either didn't have a spare or enough time to fit one, because the British are now towing it off LIKE UKE FARMERS.  Last picture shows a platoon of Churchill tanks, which became known for their ability to climb steep Tunisian hills, to the dismay of the Axis sitting atop those hills.

Finally -

Good lord aloft, that Lavrov chap doesn't know when to keep his pie-hole shut!  He might be Dimya's Foreign Minister yet he ought to possess at least a little diplomatic skill.  His quote "I believe that Hitler also had Jewish blood " has predictably annoyed the Israelis, which is bad news as Dimya needs all the friends he can get.  Art!

Lavvy The Liar

     O, and another 'Ooopsie!' moment occurred on a Kremlin-friendly news website, which accidentally published the true totals of dead and missing Ruffians as of a week ago. 

In Russia, where even the use of words like 'occupation', 'attack', 'war' and 'invasion' is prohibited, there has been another big leak. Readovka, one of the favorite media organs of the Kremlin, wrote that 13 thousand 414 Russian soldiers were killed in Ukraine and 7 thousand were missing. In the news based on the daily briefing of the Russian Ministry of Defense, it was also stated that 116 sailors died and more than 100 were missing on the Moskva warship sunk by Ukraine.

     These are credible numbers and tally with outsider estimates of between 15 to 20 thousand Ruffian dead to date.  This implies total casualties of possibly 60 thousand, or almost half the original 'Special' Military Operation force.

     Let's hear it for Dimya's 'Special' Advisers!

 

Sauerkraut Squidging

Allow Me To Explain

Thank you so much!  Very polite of you.  Your Humble Scribe is currently making up a giant pot of Bigos, Polish 'Hunter's Stew', and the recipe calls for using up a jar of sauerkraut.   Yes yes yes, I know people instantly associate this foodstuff with the Teutons - NO!  It's cabbage pickled in brine, hardly a super-secret recipe passed down lovingly from generations of Bavarian Omas 

     ANYWAY once opened, one has to squeeze the excess brine out of the sauerkraut jar, before you fork the delicious pickled cabbage* into the stew.  Art!

It is, indeed, a 'Unique taste'

     This creates the most disgusting noise in the world.  Imagine a ninety-year old man who's been smoking three packs of cigarettes a day since he was ten, then imagine him having a coughing fit, which kills him, and his last dying gurgle sounds like squidging sauerkraut.

     ANYWAY with that cheery Intro out of the way, let us carry out our mission to link May 1st back over the years BOOJUM! has been operating.

2021

BOOJUM!: I Get Jittery - (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2020

BOOJUM!: The Literary Tee Tea For Me (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2019

BOOJUM!: Harmonic Convergence (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2018

BOOJUM!: A Screening Comes Across The Sky (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2017

BOOJUM!: Zombies Over-run Rochdale! (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2016

BOOJUM!: That'll Teach Me (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2015

BOOJUM!: Now The Return - Of Mr. Jules Verne! (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2014

BOOJUM!: The Evening Strides On - (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

*  I may be alone in describing it thus.

Of Matters Maritime And Monetary And Mor

 NO THAT IS NOT A TYPO!

It's Conrad being hilariously witty and clever.  You'll see.  

     Okay, in reverse order, be advised that this Intro will concern what's going on in the Black Sea, so if you're fed up with Dimya's 'Special' Military Operation you may want to skip this bit.  But if you do I WILL KNOW AND THERE WILL BE CONSEQUENCES <eyes Remote Nuclear Detonator lovingly>.  Art!

     We put that in to ensure you are really paying attention, not merely moving your glazzies from left to right.

    ANYWAY Conrad wondered what the cost to the Ruffians was in terms of having the 'Moskva' and 'Saratov' blow up and sink.  These are expensive big ticket items.  You have doubtless seen pictures of 'Moskva' listing badly and on fire, on a nice calm Black Sea (or 'Chernoye Mor' in Ruffian, so now you understand today's title), which makes one wonder where the bad weather came from.  Art!

In healthier times

     A bit of internet snooping reveals that the ship cost £575 million.  Ooo-err Matron! though I cannot find anything about the cost of the 'Saratov', but can speculate it would have been a lot cheaper since it was about fifty years old and not heavily armed.  Guesstimate at £100 million?  So a combined total of £675 million.  Art!

'Saratov' pre-submarine status

     Two-thirds of a billion pounds.  That's not chump-change.  Nor is that all, because replacing these ships today would 1) cost a lot more and 2) Be impossible.  The Ruffians, you see, lack the shipbuilding capacity to build anything as large as the Moskva again; currently they produce frigates or destroyers, at a very slow rate indeed.  This is one reason why their cursed aircraft carrier, the 'Admiral Kuznetsov', is still stuck in port and has been for the past four years.

     This is where things get ironically interesting, because the Ukrainians have, at Mikolayiv, shipbuilding capacity capable of building aircraft carriers, or guided-missile cruisers, and the Ruffians haven't been able to get anywhere near it.  Art!

Mik

     Another interesting wrinkle is that only the Ukrainians have a construction plant capable of building gas turbine engines.  For those not in the know, gas turbines are the go-to form of propulsion for naval vessels, since they produce such high energy output.  The Moskva had them; that old clunker the Saratov had to make do with diesel engines.  The Kuznetsov has steam turbines, which were supposedly going to be replaced.  Hmmmm.  Not any time soon.

     Tsar Poutine had lots of plans to beef up and modernise the Ruffian navy, which have come to naught, principally because of money, and also because Ukraine - you might be ahead of me here - refused to have anything to do with Ruffian shipbuilding after Crimea was annexed.  As indicated above, modern naval vessels are hideously expensive and from design to commissioning will take years.  People better informed on Ruffian naval matters state that the Ruffians will produce the lead ship for a class, and then there will be a seven or eight year wait before the next one turns up.  Art!

     TLDR:  Ruffia's not replacing those lost ships anytime soon.

Gin And Senility

Conrad blames both of these for making him forget that, yes, people really do read this scrivel, and even comment on it at times.  I also get peculiar spam comments, occasionally in a foreign language - quite what that Vietnamese one said is anyone's guess.

     ANYWAY some kind and anonymous soul helped with my item about 'GOLEM' - in the Comments, which I only rarely check.

Unknown commented on "Conrad: If He's Breathe-y He's Seethy"

29 Apr 2022

The golem inscription to activate it is EMETH (TRUTH) written on its forehead. To shut it down, you rub out the first E to leave it METH (DEATH).

     Well thank you kind person.  Now if only the foes of Roddy MacDowall in "IT!" had known this ...

    Well that's a bummer.  The BBC link that I had to a set of photographic listings has decided not to work. Art!

     This is a pain as there were dozens of lists.  O well, time to get the little grey cells a-working again.  Next!

"Tormentor" Again, Folks

Getting near the end now, and since nobody has said they don't like it that means everybody loves loves loves it, so you can rely on LOTS more extracts.

‘Oh!  You mean – er – “Upstairs”.’

               The immaculate stranger sighed.

               ‘Honestly, humans!  There is no up or down in space, you know.  Don’t be so literal.’

               He stopped and gave Louis a long, penetrating stare.

               ‘You have come to the attention of management, Louis.  Whilst not endorsing your treatment of Eric Miller, we are impressed with your vanquishing several earthbound malevolent spirits.  You can work off your sin in the first by dealing with the latter.’

               He stopped speaking and walked around the room, picking up a bible.

               ‘The good old King James, eh?  The other message is about you and Yvonne, and your bond-and-bind.’

               Louis exchanged glances with the spirit, who looked as puzzled as he felt.

               ‘It is nearly unique, but there are precedents – one in Renaissance Italy and another in the early Byzantine Empire, at Trabizond.  That’s my geographical area of expertise.  We did look into it, and the process was undertaken sincerely by both parties and – yes?’

               Louis felt like a schoolchild, holding his hand up.

               ‘What on earth is “bond-and-bind”?’

               Michael spoke slower, as if explaining to a child.

               ‘Mutual fealty and obligation expressed by both parties, sealed with blood.  Sorry, blood and the spirit equivalent – ectoplasm,’ and he grinned amusedly at the use of the cliché.

     What a wag this mysterious 'Michael' is!

Meanwhile, Back In Tunisia ...

I need to get this batch of "The War Illustrated" photographs done and dusted before time rolls on entirely too far.  Art!

     For Your Information, 'R.E.M.E.' stands for "Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers', probably known to the rest of the army as 'Rear Echelon Meal Eaters'.

     The first two photographs show REME recovering tanks in order to repair them and send them back into action, since a minor mechanical fault could cause a breakdown and abandonment, and you don't want to lose a £10,000 tank because a gasket worth 6 shillings blew out*.

     That middle picture shows a workshop in action, where kit can be repaired or replaced.  No, Your Humble Scribe has no idea what arcane mysteries they're performing.  O hang on - the blurb says that they're blacksmiths.  Wowsers, imagine having to work in close proximity to a furnace IN THE DESERT.  That last picture is of their main workshop, where the sandbags are said to provide shade.  Yes, and also to ensure whatever appallingly noisy power tools they use SOUND AS LOUD AS POSSIBLE!

Finally -

No, don't worry, nothing about Tsar Poutine here, I got all of that out of the way in the Intro.  Which you should know UNLESS YOU SKIPPED IT <eyes Remote Nuclear Detonator lovingly>.

     No, just to say that I've been re-reading "Once And Future" again, Volume 2, and am very impressed with the artwork.  Art!

     What can happen is that your lead artists simply cannot keep up to schedule, so there are verrrrrrrrry long gaps between publications, or they bring in a second-stringer to keep to schedule, which is what happened to "Scalped" and why I immediately stopped buying it.  Dunno if they went back to the original artist or not, or even if it made the end of it's run.  I may chase up on that.

     And with that, we are done!

*  Old pre-decimal coinage being used here.