What Dreams May Scum

No! Is Not A Reference To The Robin Williams Film

Conrad thinks he has seen a bit of it, and was hugely unimpressed, so much so that he gave up on it, and that's that.  I think it involved an infinitely mutable landscape that was written into the script because the studios knew what they could get with CGI way back then.  Art!

     No, what I refer to is the dreams that Your Humble Scribe experienced recently, and the 'Scum' describes quite accurately the disgustrously-debrised landscape of his mind.  Buckle up, and prepare for a new concept of daft.  Art!

     We begin in the corridors of an Art Deco hotel, with Conrad carefully inspecting the bas-reliefs of modern Italian cruise-liners set high into the wall as decorations.  When I say 'modern' I mean late-Thirties vibe, so quite what I was doing knocking around Il Duce's Fascist dictatorship is another mystery.  Art!

Like this in 2D

     Because Conrad is a perceptive chap, even in dreams, I observed to myself that there was hardly anyone around, so one imagines we were in the middle of the afternoon, when sensible Latins retire to take a nap and avoid the worst of the sun.  Or, 'best of the sun' if you hail from the latitudes of This Sceptred Isle, because we have not been blessed with sunshine today at all.

     ANYWAY an order comes over the hotel's Tannoy* system that everyone is to make their way to the top floor.  Why?  Who knows!  Conrad suspects there is flooding due.  A mass of people suddenly appears, so presumably there is an element of risk - possibly we are in Venice? - and all of us make our way to the top floor of the hotel, which is a vast dining hall, half full with the high and mighty scoffing away.  Now you're talking.  Art!

A flavour of this

     We uninvited guests sit down at various unattended tables, and food is served. Conrad cannot remember any of the comestibles bar the very last thing, which was a multi-layered cake, the slices of which were at least two feet tall, and which he fell upon as the wolf on the fold.  Diabetes be damned in dreams.  Don't judge me.  Art!

     I think the servers called it a 'trifle', and there is actually a precedent for this, the Italian dessert known as 'Zuppa Inglese', which is an ironic Latin swipe at a typically soggy and aqueous English trifle.  Art!

Zuppa Inglese

     Apparently a dream trifle can defy the laws of physics, since that above cannot possibly be stacked in a slice two feet high.  Although you could lay it sideways and have it two feet long.

     Well, they say dreams are a combination of symbolism, playback of your day and wish-fulfillment, and there's no debating that Conrad wishes he could sit down and devour an entire cake two feet high and four feet in diameter, without collapsing in a coma afterwards.  Art!

Now you're talking

     We now return you to boring reality.

The Haul

Conrad hied himself hence to Gomorrah-in-the-Irwell this morning, fully intending to see that Yoyama installation at the Aviva Gallery, or Event Space, or whatever pseuds are calling it now.

      However.  I had gone in my Skechers, which, if Art will do the duty for -

     They are very comfortable, but have absolutely NO TRACTION on a smooth surface in wet weather, such as the flagstones that proliferate across the whole city centre.  So, not wishing to fall over and break something delicate and painful, I restricted myself to Travelling Man and Fopp.  Yoyama next week in shoes.  Art!

     You can't tell thanks to distance, but the top four "Outcast" are written by Robert Kirkman, whom you might know as the creator of "The Walking Dead", which Conrad gave up on after 12 volumes as it was just too bleak and depressing.  However, he is also the creator of "Invincible", which does have it's dark moments, but which is a hella entertaining space-opera/superhero cross.  Now, Rob, I bought these sight unseen, so they'd better be good.  Art!

     "For All Mankind" is an alternate history where the space race hotted up early and never cooled off.  Conrad has to confess that what sold him was a promo poster of South Canadian astronauts on the Moon's surface - toting M16s.  Don't judge me.

     The CD "Soft Landing" by Art School Girlfriend was playing on Fopp's PA** when I walked in, and it invoked the Two Very Good Tracks Rule - if I hear two very good tracks from an album, it get's bought.  Currently playing as I type, definitely in the 'Dreampop' genre.

     "BRZRKR" has a funny story attached to it.  Conrad bought Volume One probably a couple of years ago and asked the clerk at Travelling Man if Volume Two was out, except I was convinced it was called "XTRMNTR", which baffled the poor lad, until he went and asked a more experienced member of staff.  Ohow we laughed.  Art!

The Primal Scream album

I'd Better Post This Refutation Of Senility

Quick smart.  Art!

     How fortunate that I took a providential photo of my 'Battleships' solution!  Yes, it's 90º out of true, which doesn't really matter with Battleships, because I say so.  This is proof that Conrad's not ready for one of those jackets that lace up the back.  Yes, I could have cheated and looked at the solution, but I have an honest face.

O Dear.  Anyway -

Just a brief update for you, and to rub salt and lemon juice in the cuts.  The Ruffian ruble continues to slide and is now on some exchange sites at ₽98 to the dollar.  The reasons are principally: costs of the Special Idiotic Operation have spiralled and now consume 1/3 of the entire budget; oil and gas revenue has halved; sanctions, which are loudly declaimed as not working and yet need to be lifted as soon as possible.  Some cruel wag also posted this on Twitter.  Art!

     That should read "Toilet".

     It's not looking good for Bloaty Gas Tout, is it?

"City In The Sky"

Ace hasn't been very successful in persuading her escort that she and the Doctor are travellers in time, which is only to be expected.

     Nat stopped in mid-stride, looking at her companion with suspicion and scorn.

     ‘You’re pulling my leg!  Okay, okay, don’t bother if you don’t want to tell me.’

     Briefly, Ace felt like protesting, but shrugged and carried on.  The Tardis was only a few hundred metres away now, with some curious crew hanging around it and getting worryingly close.  Fruit trees bedded in hydroponic troughs obscured their final approach until Nat called out to the people clustered around the familiar blue box.

     ‘Hey, get back from that!’

     Ace recognised two of the people as those she had encountered initially: that big, ruddy-faced man and the small, narrow-hipped woman with long hair.  Other people stood and looked at the big blue box, muttering to themselves.

     ‘Nat, this thing isn’t what it looks like,’ called the woman.  She indicated off to one side, where a stack of tools lay.  ‘Yuri hit it with a shovel and didn’t even scratch it.’

     Briefly, Ace felt a touch of what her mentor experienced about offensive actions against his timeship: anger.

      ‘Did you plonkers try to damage the TARDIS!’ she shouted.  ‘That’s our ride home!’

     The woman looked at her with a wary eye.

     O don't fret so, Ace, it's not as if they can really inflict any damage at all.

* Old-school PA

**  New-school Tannoy

Free Fall

Let Us Conduct A Thought Experiment

Conrad is blatantly cribbing from an internet educational resource on physics, which looks into the phenomenon of what you and I might call 'Free Fall' and which physicists, being the pseuds they are, would call 'the acceleration of gravity'.  This is a very, very particular value, that of - and I apologise for using the Metric system - an acceleration of 9.8 metres per second per second.  They use a 1,000 kilogram baby elephant and a 1 kilogram rat (they say 'mouse' but can only really mean 'rat') as an example.  Art!

     They then, in a scene you would only credit to Atilla The Hun or Quentin Tarantino, hurl them from the roof of a building in order to demonstrate that, despite one being a thousand times heavier than the other, they both fall at the same velocity.

     At least until the ground intervenes.  Conrad is surprised the RSPCA or the South Canadian equivalent hasn't been around to have a quiet word with them.  So, no, despite you thinking that the elephant will fall one thousand times faster than the rat, they both hit the same constant of 9.8 m/m and then the pavement.  Art!

     Of course - obviously! - this has only the very vaguest connection with what I really wanted to talk about, which is the Ruffian economy.  Various pundits are claiming that the Ruffians can sustain their Special Idiotic Operation for perhaps two to three years longer, to which Conrad responds with 'Pshaw!' and a dismissive sneer.

     "Why is this so, O though tugger of moustaches?" I hear you quibble.  Actually I tweak more than tug, trying to get the ends to come to a neat point, which is pretty difficult without moustache wax a

     ANYWAY although not an economist, I know enough to see a currency undergoing serious turmoil and depreciation when it happens.  Art!

     Okay, this snapshot was taken earlier this morning (3rd August as I've no idea what date this will actually be published) at about 09:30.  Art!

     This is from early evening, say about 18:00 on 03/08/2023*.  As you can see, the ruble has dropped almost half a ruble in value in a single day.  This, ladies and gentlemen and those unsure, is an economy in free fall.  Hence today's title.

     What makes this slide significant is that the Ruffian Central Bank intervened in July when the exchange rate was ₽92 to the dollar, bringing it down to ₽89.  A few weeks later and the exchange rate is worse than ever, which puts the Central Bank in a dilemma: fund the budget deficit or prop up the ruble?

     There will be some who shout Hurrah! and throw ticker tape at this news, because they claim it means that Ruffia will increase output of goods and services.  Except they don't export goods or services; they export oil, gas, coal, and wood, which are now a drug on the market.  They used to export military equipment, but thanks to their dreadful performance in Ukraine, this market has slumped, too.  Art!

" - and this, son, is the very latest T-90M, hot off the production line.**"

     What this depreciation will definitely do is lower living standards, which are at rock-bottom already outside the metropoli, and create inflation.

    But don't worry, Ruffians, it's all part of Putin's 4D game of chess!  Which, to be honest, looks like a 2D game of draughts with 31 pieces missing.

     

Just A Tee Hee Moment

As you may have guessed from our citric commentary here, we are not over-fond of Citizen Trump, but we gratefully acknowledge that he's able to generate content whilst not being a real politician, thus not breaking our charter terms.  Which we'd break anyway if it got us more traffic.  Art!

     Ah, what a wag that Dave is!  He's a South Canadian vlogger and podcaster, who by South Canadian standards is quite a lefty, which by This Sceptred Isle standards makes him either a Liberal or a moderate Tory THESE TERMS FOR COMPARATIVE PURPOSES ONLY AND DO NOT REFLECT ANY REAL WORLD POLITICS.  THANK YOU.

     Dave was going to analyse just where this meme about '561 years in prison' came from, but this was superceded by the news that Darth Marmalade - nice suit, dude! - is due to appear in court at 21:00 our time to be arrested and arraigned.

     Thankfully I laid in extra popcorn.

"The War Illustrated"

Let us pick up the reins again, after having only covered the cover of Issue 175, which featured a young Yugoslavian partisan and a portrait of Tito.  It's interesting to note that post-War Yugoslavia remained a Communist dictatorship, yet it also remained neutral and definitely aloof from the Sinisters.  Art!

 

     A top to port and starboard the caption explains that this is an advance north from Anzio, without explaining what a costly near-disaster the amphibious landing had been.  Can't let Gerry know what actually happened, can we?

     And at bottom, the heights of Cassino get a typical Allied artillery malleting.  Note the date - February 1944.  The battle was to go on for another three months in spectacularly horrid fashion - though again none of the captions will say that as it would look bad.

"City In The Sky"

This is rather apt - I am currently watching the Starry Trex episode "For The World Is Hollow And I Have Touched The Sky" with one eye, and Doctor McCoy is getting all smoochy with the exotic humanoid female - hey, you can't let J. Tiberius Kirk get all the girls!  They are aboard what is effectively an arcology, except it's a generation ship 10,000 years old.  Warranty probably expired, then.

     ‘Don’t you have robots to do that?’ asked Ace.  ‘Or tractors?’

    Nat laughed briefly, before looking back at the other woman.

    ‘Seriously?  Wow, you really are out of touch.  We use physical labour.  It keeps people exercised, doesn’t require complicated machinery and consumes a minimum of resources.’

     They continued walking and Ace wondered what the Doctor was up to.  Getting into mischief, probably, and expecting her to figure out how this giant space-station functioned whilst he got to act  cool and dangerous.  She winced when witnessing other space-station crew walking on the “roof” above her, expecting them to drop off like falling leaves with every passing second –

     Nat took pity on her charge, who was obviously completely unused to the novel architecture of the sphere.

     ‘Where do you two come from?  According to Yuri, you appeared out of thin air, materialised like magic.  I know we’ve been Upstairs for decades, but you can’t tell me they’ve developed that technology Downstairs.’

     Ace felt a bit like a deer in the headlights.  She shiftily looked around to make sure no-one else could hear before plunging into an explanation.

     ‘Er – we come from – well, I come from the past.  Nineteen eighty-five.  The Doctor comes from the future, year eight hundred-gazillion or something.  And our way of getting about looks like a police box, except it isn’t.’

     I doubt you're going to convince anyone, Ace.

CONRAD WANTS!

I'm not sure what the story is behind this toy, and there was no accreditation or description as it was on a Twitter post with the Tweeter just kind of gloating about it.  Art!

     You'll note that the aircraft are out of scale, which doesn't seem to have deterred the two lads from enjoying themselves.  All they need now is a Sinister missile cruiser to engage in cat-and-mouse games with.  I'll do a little digging about this monster.

Finally -

Since the trains appear to be having another day of industrial action on Saturday, I may venture forth into Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell to see what delights Travelling Man and Forbidden Planet hold, and perhaps even visit the Aviva 'event space'

*  Please note the correct use of date format.

**  Dad did have his fingers crossed whilst saying this.

A Gang Of Crazies Is Not Necessarily The Crazy Gang

 The Red Mist Is Receding ...

Conrad got stuck in traffic this evening after doing the shopping at Iceland; it took 20 minutes to travel a hundred yards, with traffic seemingly backed-up all the way from the M62 for miles into Rochdale.  The cashier at Morrisons said there had been 3 accidents on the motorway at rush hour, which had caused the tailbacks, but I cannot find any mention of them on teh Interwebz.  

     O - hang on!  Just found evidence that it actually happened.  Art!

A fun way to spend 3 hours

     This is the M60 at 15:00, and I got stuck at 18:00, so it was quite the jam.  More of a traffic clot than a jam, really.  There was a silver lining, however.

     ANYWAY I would like to abruptly change track and re-acquaint you with "The Mind Of Wolfie Smith", a comic strip about a teenager gifted with immense powers of ESP, who is also miserably unlucky.  His character first appeared in "Tornado" and re-surfaced in "2000AD" when they bought out the former.  Art!

     In one of his misadventures, Wolfie is blackmailed into working for the grotesquely deformed Harry Kramer, a.k.a. 'The Bogeyman', into breaking into a top secret vault in pursuit of the master computer within.  Except -

     It's not a master computer.  It's a biological warfare agent.  I bet you can see where this is going ...

     Well, Wolfie is being a little circumloquotious here, as the 'Holy Terrors' were infected by the bacteria, sent raving mad, and killed each other.  So they were, momentarily, a gang of crazies.

     More contemporaneously, there is also the remake of "The Crazies", which is one of those rarities, a remake that is better than the original.  This wasn't hard, the 1973 original had a budget of less than $300,000, and the 2010 iteration weighed in at $20 million, and had Timothy Olyphant to boot.  It was a modest success*.  Art!

     Here you see all the citizens of Ogden Marsh herded into cages, in order to stop them wandering off and spreading the Trixie virus, because SPOILER there is no cure and all these people are either going to die or become homicidally insane.  Art!

     Some Good Ole Boys then destroy the pen's fencing by ramming it, and yes, they may already have joined the ranks of Crazy, or they may just be ornery South Canadians who distrust the Gubmint on principle.  Art!

You want a gang of crazies?  That's how you get a gang of crazies.

     Thanks to cramming all those people in cheek by jowl, if any single one of them was infected, now they all are.  Well done Major Disaster!

     ANYWAY of course - obviously! - none of this has to do with the Crazy Gang.  You see, whilst I was sitting in the traffic jam, thanking heavens that this is Perfidious Albion, where nobody has a gun, a decades-old memory floated to the top of the septic sewer that is my mind.  Sorry if you can't unsee that.

     "Nervo and Knox".  I think this pairing was the answer to a riddle from an old Eagle annual, because the article declared that they were members of the 'Crazy Gang', as if that was explanation enough.  "The Who?" I thought.

A Crazy of One

     Well, wouldn't you know, the Crazy Gang were a gang of very successful comedians, three duos who teamed up on stage to outstanding success.  You can forgive Conrad for not being aware of them as they began in late 1931 and had ceased performing not long after I was born, as they were all very long in the tooth by then.

     For your information, their line-up was: Bud Flanagan; Chesney Allen; Jimmy Nervo; Teddy Knox; Charlie Naughton; Jimmy Gold.  Art!

     They were so successful on stage during the Thirties that they were signed by Gainsborough studios and made several films, pre- and then into the Second Unpleasantness.  Not only that, they had the Royal seal of approval as King George VI was very fond of them.  You can also see Flanagan and Allen doing their signature, and most successful, song "Underneath The Arches" in the film "Dunkirk" - the black-and-white version thereof.

     Turned out to be quite a productive traffic jam.

Talking Of Crazy -

This one is bizarre and barely credible.  Okay, things in Nigeria might not be spiffy, but to do what four Nigerian men did is well beyond the pale.  Art!

     This is them arriving in Brazil.  They had crossed the Atlantic perched on top of the rudder and in the crawl-way space above it.  I won't go into what they were reduced to drinking when they ran out of water; they had expected to take a much shorter route to Europe and had only barely enough food and water for that.

     The bonkers thing about this is that it's not the first time Nigerians have stowed away on the rudder of a ship - it's happened at least twice already.

"City In The Sky"

Roll up!  Roll up!  Grandstand seats for the End Of Civilisation As We Know It!  A bit tasteless, perhaps, but accurate.

     ‘That was a live feed from Tokyo, wasn’t it?’ asked a voice.  ‘I’ll try to pick up Yokohama instead.’

     Feeling sick to her stomach, Ace blundered out of the claustrophobic room, back into open air. 

     She liked explosions, yes.  The mass slaughter below was a whole level beyond anything acceptable or understandable.  How could they do it!

     Outside, she felt the crushing weight of the upper hemisphere looming over her, making her tense and fall into a near-crouch.  A consoling hand on her shoulder made her look up to see Nat, the Warden, looking at her with a mixture of compassion and worry.

     ‘I couldn’t stay in there either.  It’s too awful,’ said the officer.  ‘Come on, show me your strange device and keep my mind off things.’

     The young woman sighed and tried to orient herself.  Up on the ceiling sat a dark blue speck: the TARDIS.  Ten minutes walk away. 

     ‘There it is.  I don’t know how you put up with this – it feels like the sky’s going to fall on my head.’

     To Ace, the awful dizzying panorama merely scrolled away under her feet, the sense of an imminent collapse never receding. 

     ‘You get used to it.  All of us who came Upstairs had to do two weeks acclimatisation in Hungary at a special training site.  We wore VR helmets that projected a hemispherical environment.’

     They passed a group of people tilling a hectare of open ground, planting seedlings from containters.  Several looked up and nodded at the pair.

     A bucolic contrast, hmmm?

Talking Of Rudders -

You may have heard, if at second- or third-hand, that killer whales, more accurately known as orcas, have been attacking small boats off the coast of Spain, an activity that has been happening since 2020.  Marine conservationists who study the orcas, say this behaviour isn't aggressive, compulsive or any other negative, but it in fact a form of play.  Art!

     Their attacks focus on the rudder of these boats, which they quite often knock apart, because a ten-ton orca overmatches a plastic rudder every time.  They will play with the internal plastic packing inside the rudder when it spills out, poking it around the ocean with their noses.

     - and now the adults are teaching their delinquent offspring to do the same.

     It's not quite challenging Hom. Sap. for dominance of the seas - but it's a worrying start.

Finally -

I bought extra popcorn and crisps, because I intend to spend some time on Youtube watching various news channels about You Know Who getting indicted for the fourth time.  Your Humble Scribe won't be toasting this any time soon as I've decided to be sober for August and see what my liver thinks.

*  $54 million globally on a $20 million budget

Stars On 45

You Have To Be Pretty Long In The Tooth For That To Make Sense

We are talking about the early Eighties, when CDs and DVDs were still science fiction, and dinosaurs roamed the Earth, or at least the prog rock bands of the time still did, which is much the same.  With the honourable exception of Pink Floyd, thanks to "Animals" and "The Wall".

     You see, at the time there was still a strong market demand for 'singles', which were vinyl records that typically only had 2 songs, one upon each side.  These went on a turntable - I'm not making this up - and would rotate at 45 revolutions per minutes.  Art!

     The 'Long Players'. usually abbreviated to 'LPs', were much larger and rotated at the stately pace of 33 r.p.m.  O the fun we had swapping speeds around!

     Perhaps you had to be there.

     ANYWAY, some Dutch session musicians were organised by one of the ex-members of Golden Earring into a band who did cover versions of songs.  Initially these were of Beatles tracks, and they crammed as many covers onto a single 45 as possible, eight of them on their first successful single.  They had a drum loop in the background and were only credited as 'Stars On 45'.  Art!

     THEY WERE <insert swear here> AWFUL!  Conrad hated them and never understood why they were popular.

     Of course - obviously! - hardly any of this has anything to do with the real meat of the matter in today's Intro, except the number '45'.  You may guess where this is going ...

     Yes!  Ex-45th Prez of South Canada, Donnie Brass Co, has now been indicted for (technically) a fourth time, by Jack 'Smiley' Smith, the Special Prosecutor appointed to cast a beady laser eye over his behaviour.  In a pleasing synchronicity, the indictment itself comes to a total of 45 pages.  Your Humble Scribe simply doesn't have the leisure time to thoroughly peruse this missive, but I can tell you that the charges levelled are quite a bit more serious than farting in a jacuzzi or nicking towels from an hotel.  Art!

     They are: "USC 371: Conspiring to defraud the United States*"

USC 1512 K: "Conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding"

USC 1512 (c) (2): "Obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding"

USC 241: "Conspiracy against rights"

     It bluntly states "The Defendant lost the 2020 presidential election."  Well.  There's not much wiggle room there.

     At present it's not possible to say when this case will come to trial, but we are faced with the delicious prospect of Agent Orange having to appear in court to be formally arrested, an experience he does not relish one bit.  Last time in New York he claimed that people were coming up to him crying in sympathy, which is verbal excrement; they dislike him so much in NYNY they allowed the court exit door to swing shut in his face, as he seemed to expect it to be held open for his sheer magnificence.  He already has a full trial schedule in March and May of next year, which are going to take place in the middle of the South Canadian primary campaign season.  This is when the Republicans decide whom they want to run for Prez. Conrad recommends Citizen Trump to pencil in July for his arrest.  Art!

     This is Chris Christie, ex-governor of New York and previously a friend of Trump, as much as he can ever have a friend.  They have now fallen out and Christie is also running for Prez.  Not that he has the chance of a nitrocellulose dog in Hades, but it gives him a platform to attack Darth Marmalade at every opportunity.  I wonder what he'll have to say about Indictment #4?

   It's also worth noting that all the verbal flailing about 'weaponisation' and 'Nazis' and 'witch-hunts' suddenly vanishes when Benedict Donald is actually in court.  You don't see him suing the Feds for harassment or defamation, do you?  No, because if you're in court there are certain standards to be observed about facts, evidence and reality.

     Lay in your supply of popcorn!

There's A Reason It Was Called 'Deepwater Horizon'

More fascinating fun facts!  Or - is it just me?  The DH was classified as an 'Ultra-deep water semi-submersible', meaning that it was purposed to drill out in the briny deeps, the better to lay hold of the old black gold.  Art!

     This thing was designed to operate in ocean waters of up to 8,000 foot depth, which is one-and-a-half miles.  To put it another way, if the pipe to the ocean floor was laid horizontally, it would take you half an hour to walk it's length.  The drill itself was able to operate to 30,000 foot depth of seabed, which is five and a half miles. So that horizontal stroll would take nearly two hours.

     When the blowout occurred, DH was 'only' operating in waters of 5,000 feet depth and the drill was 'only' 18,360 feet into the substratum.  Is this significant?  O yes indeed! If we guess at a back-of-fag-packet calculation of there being 5 gallons of slurry and cement and oil and gas and water per foot of pipe, then this yields a total of 350 tons exploding onto the DH at the blowout.  At maximum depth this would have almost doubled the amount of blowout material.  Art!

     There might well have been nothing left.

     The fascinating world of deep-sea oil drilling!

"City In The Sky"

Ace, nosy and inquisitive as a passel of cats, has got an invitation to the Comms centre aboard Arcology One.  Which she immediately regrets.

‘Cool!’ replied Ace, with an enthusiasm that quickly turned to a queasy sense of horror when she realised what the enormous array of curved monitors inside were showing.  There were more display tracks, new ones crawling across monitors towards Moscow and Saint Petersburg and Tokyo.  Great swathes of Asia were blinking out in masses of green pixels, denoting radioactive fallout zones.

     For ten minutes she watched in the silent room, hearing only the soft sound of anxious breathing and a subdued hum from the air-conditioner. 

     ‘Oh god,’ said an anonymous watcher, in a voice loaded with quiet despair.  ‘The Chinese have emptied their silos and mobile launchers.’

     Dozens and dozens and dozens of yellow tracks began to crawl outwards from at least six different locations on the monitor showing mainland China.

     ‘Secret launchers,’ commented another watcher, turning to glance sideways at Ace.  ‘The Russians missed those.’

     More blue tracks began to erupt from Russian territory, and then there were suddenly green ones sprouting from the USA, and from Europe, and from three places in mid-Atlantic.  One of the display screens on the left of the monitor arc suddenly blanked out, then came back on with a warning that the signal had failed.

    Yep, it's not every day you get a grandstand view of World War Three in progress.

O Goodness Me, They're Dogpiling Indy!

'Dogpile' is a South Canadianism, referring to people jumping atop another person and creating a giant immobile heap, where the victim presumably expires from asphyxiation and crush injuries.  A bit grim for Conrad - although I did hear it used of Darth Marmalade at his impeachment; one wit asserted his defence attorneys would dogpile him to prevent him from giving evidence.  Art!

     I hasten to add that this is from the "Daily Express", which is one of the tabloid press, and not noted for any great degree of journalistic integrity.  But if even they are being critical of Indy 5, things are bleaker than ever for Disney.

     The details are that this $1 billion loss is over the whole of 2023 to date, not just for Indy 5, and includes distinctly lacklustre box office from Disney's other flops this year - "Elemental", "Haunted Mansion" and "The Little Mermaid" being the most notable.  Is that distant, mocking laughter "The Sound Of Freedom"?

Some People Have Entirely TOO MUCH Time On Their Hands

Yes, this is rather like the toilet calling out the sink for being made of porcelain.  However, allow me to put forth a map that must be familiar with you all by now.  Art!

     One of the people on Quora, Tomaz, who appears by his surname to be Polish, undertook a serious geographic and geological analysis of this map.  Conrad is unaware of what his qualifications in either of these fields are, but they undoubtedly surpass mine.  We may come back to this.

*  We will forego our traditional "South Canada" for the moment.

A Hat Trick

NO!  This Is Nothing To Do With The Ballfoot Game

Kindly remember that Conrad detests the sport whichever gender is playing it - in fact, has the Prime Leaguer finished?  I don't recall seeing fans of various ilks gloating or scowling across the Have Your Say pages on the BBC News website.  Ah.  Apparently it finished months ago.  That shows you how much Your Humble Scribe is interested.  When I take over it will be a grim day indeed for the game.  Art!

     No, what I refer to is the recent visit by Shoigu The **** to the land of Norks, where he was hoping to get weapons and ammunition, because the Ruffians are running low.  Jake Broe did a hilarious commentary on Shoigu, who looked all at sea in the first visit by a Ruffian head of the Defence Ministry to the land of Norks.  Art!

     Conrad was a little disconcerted by the second word in Cyrillic, which is "Puti", thinking that some hapless Nork minion was going to be executed for mis-spelling The Dwarvish Dictator's name.

     Well, no.  Nork Minion can breathe a sigh of relief.  The phrase is actually "Schastlivogo puti, tovarisch Ministir Oboroni Sergei Shoigu", which is Ruffian for "Merry way, comrade Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu".  'Puti' apparently means 'Way' in Ruffian, and this is him being seen off at the airport.  Sorry, that should read 'The Airport' as I'm pretty sure the Norks only have the one, singular.  One might also point out that the Sinister term 'Comrade' died the death over thirty years ago.  Art!

     And here we are ten minutes later, which is how long it took me to get ME restarted after all the menu items stopped responding, which i

     ANYWAY one wonders that Shoigu dared to fly in a Ruffian jet.  I suppose the risk is worth it as it would take weeks to travel to Pyongyang by train or motorcade, and they need that ammo now!  Now, as to that hat trick -

     Do you see what the Norks did there?  THEY HAVE A BIGGER HAT.  This is a bit of a two-fingered salute to Shoigu, and the implied insults didn't end there.  Art!

     Poor old Shoggy, he must feel so emasculated and inadequate.  If he knew that most of those medals are for achievements like "Being Able To Walk And Talk At The Same Time" or "Ate Six Whopper Meals One After Another" or "Has 18 Children*" then he might no feel so glum.  Well, he can go back home proud and confident in the knowledge that the Norks are going to keep on selling the Ruffians 40-year old artillery shells and rockets that frequently blow up or mis-fire and kill their crews.  It's almost as if a mysterious and un-knowable someone were deliberately sabotaging them ...

"I'm afraid I can't possibly comment," said Budanov.

     Just to rub an unpleasant mixture of salt and lemon juice in the wound, the ruble is currently trading at ₽91.44 to the dollar, meaning it's started to slide in value again, and those Nork shells and rockets are going to now cost even more.

     It gets worse for Bloaty Gas Tout - Jiggy Jiggy Priggy has been photographed in public in Saint Petersburg, shaking hands and looking pretty spry for a dead man.  Art!

     

Cryptid Season Is Open

Conrad suspects that it's a slow news day and that the summer silly season is approaching, because this turned up in his feed.  Art!

     The tabloids all ran with the title of "The Thames Anaconda".  Because it looks like a snake.  Well, the Fleet Street hacks, whom Lord Kitchener once described as 'Drunken Reptiles' seem to have found a fellow creature.

     In reality, as others have posted, it's probably a wooden stump with a bottle-cap on top.  It looks nothing like an anaconda - where's the rest of it's body?  Art!

This, ladies and germs, is an anaconda in the water

     Anacondas cannot survive in water below 25º C and the Thames is a bracing 16º C at best.  Coming up next - man bites fog (it's a bit of a nothingburger).

SLAP! Went Conrad's Open Palm

Who are the idiots making these ridiculous claims?  Has quality journalism rolled over and died?  Why are Wagon Wheels smaller than they used to be?  Is Will Smith going into politics?  Art!

     May I remind these morons with a memory problem that Vincent Price starred in the FIRST adaptation of Richard Matheson's novel "I Am Legend", which went by the far less catchy title of "Last Man On Earth".  Art!

     And the less I see of those awful CGI zombie-cum-vampires the happier I will be.

Donnie Boracic O

It sounds better if you run the words all together.  For those of you puzzled by this peculiar language, 'Boracic lint' is rhyming language for 'skint', which in turn means being bereft of funds.

     O and who's this over in the corner, but Citizen Trump.  As you must surely know by now, Agent Orange is facing multiple lawsuits, with even more to come.  Having a stable of lawyers and attorneys to cope with the ever-increasing legal workload does not come cheap.  Art!

In the rough

     Up to November last year this wasn't such a problem, as the Republicans were willing to fund his legal bills - as long as he didn't declare running for Prez again.  Once he did that those money taps were turned off, and so far this year he's had to fork out $40 million in legal costs.  This no doubt galls him bitterly, and he's been threatening to not pay his lawyers, which is a lose-lose strategy because they will undoubtedly sue, win and never go near him again.

     Donnie's trademark legal go-to, trying to delay a case interminably, is not going to succeed in the long term, and every case that he tries to drag out is only going to increase his legal fees.

     There is also the vexed question of where the money is coming from.  It has come from a Political Action Committee, supposedly established to help him campaign for the  White House, and critics are now looking very closely at this fund to see if he's breaking campaign finance rules.  Art!

"City In The Sky"

The Doctor is off gathering an insight into how Earth politics and the Arc-ipelago co-exist, or not, and Ace is busy getting into trouble herself.

     She caught a sudden movement at her elbow, turning to find a pair of gimlet-sharp eyes looking at her, an un-nerving experience, before continuing.

     ‘It’s never made sense.  The general’s junta there have always been critics of the entire Arc-ipelago, for absolutely no reason.’

     ‘They worry about an array of spies-in-the-skies, perhaps?’

     Emilia snorted in contempt.

     ‘As if!  We improved our software and sensors after the Little Crash – it was only common sense to do so.  We aren’t a spy satellite, still.  There are dozens of satellites up in orbit that can see more than us, over a wider area and beyond any stealth measures.  Why pick on us?  It’s madness.’

     A fish jumped in the pond, making a splash and ripples that swam outwards.

     ‘Hmmm,’ said the Doctor, thinking.  Up here one did have a different perspective on the Earth, just as the Earth had a different perspective about the Arc-ipelago.  A paradigm began to form in his fertile imagination.

 

The taut silence between Ace and her escort Warden didn’t last long.  The woman flexed her arms, making her silvered epaulettes ripple, and sighed.

     ‘I shall regret this.  Do you want to go back into Communications?’

     The regret came from her dread of seeing and hearing what Downstairs was suffering.  This nuclear “exchange” had been going on for less than twelve hours and already at least eighty million were dead or injured.

     

*  This is actually feasible; contraceptives are illegal in Norkland and, not to be too vulgar, what else is there to do?