Numb And Number

NO! This Is Not A Typo Nor About That Film

You ought to realise that Conrad and the English language are old acquaintances by now, and if I type out a word or phrase <bites tongue to avoid using pseud term 'aphorism'> then that is what I meant to type out.  Since we have broached the subject of that film anyway, I don't see any harm in using a picture from it.  Art!

     They made a sequel.  No idea why, you don't mess with perfection.  No, that's not true, I do have an idea why, it's because "Dumb And Dumber" made $247 million at the global box office on a budget of only $17 million, and if th

     ANYWAY that's not what we're on about here.  We are, instead <checks notes> looking at what makes you numb to pain, which is -

     Anaesthetic gas.  This is our horribly contrived way of insinuating that today's Intro is about both gas, one of the four states of matter, and numbers, which begin with 0 and end in 9.  Art!

A film about everyone over 25 dying, directed by a 44-year old

     Thanks go out to both "Joe Blogs" and "Silicon Curtain" for the subject matter, which I will try to leaven with inappropriate humour, mockery and satire, as reading of revenue statistics is not thrilling stuff.  Art!

No, not "RA3NPOM".  "GAZPROM"

     Guess who owns a 50% share in Gazprom?  NO!  Not Lord Lucan.  The Ruffian state, that's who.  Selling Ruffian gas used to be a doddle, because unlike oil it doesn't need to be refined in order to be used, so the unit cost of production is less.  Plus, Ruffia had front-loaded their expenditure on gas infrastructure, which meant they could then sit back and let the profits roll in.  Art!

Pipeline infrastructure

     Gazprom, not reading the room, failed to invest in any liquefication technology, because it's expensive, takes time to create and what could possibly go wrong with their business model?

     Ooops.  

     in 2022 the Big Gee made $16 billion in profits, so the Ruffian state gets $8 billion of that, and, in a double whammy, they also take $1.6 billion in taxes.  

     SMO HAD ENTERED THE CHAT.

     In 2023 the Not-So-Big-Anymore Gee makes a loss of $7 billion, thus no profits or tax windfall.  Art!

     Gargoyle-features had thought that he could use gas supply as a weapon and blackmail Europe into doing what he wanted.  Sadly for him, his 3D Tiddlywinks skills were not up to the task; 26 countries co-operated to cause the price of Liquefied Natural Gas to plummet, and then supplied LNG to Europe, and his 'pivot' to sell gas to India and China was a colossal failure because there's only a single small-capacity pipeline to China and none to India.  It would take years to construct a new pipeline to either nation, and it would costs tens of billions that Modern-day Mordor does not have.  China flatly refused to pay for any of it at all.  Art!

     Things are worse than they look, because Ruffia does it's accounts-fiddling in December, where any annual deficit is magnified by the way they variously braise, casserole, broil and otherwise cook the books.  Remember that $7 billion loss in 2023 (see above)?  In that year, for Q1 to Q3 the Big-at-the-time Gee had made a profit of $5 billion.  So in Q4 that had plummeted by $12 billion.  The word 'Oooops' keeps cropping up here, doesn't it?

     So far for Q1 - Q3 in 2024, instead of a $5 billion profit, the Quite-small-now Gee has made a loss of $3.2 billion.  IF - and it's an 'IF' in neon letters six feet tall - they only (!) make a similar loss to 2023, that will still total over $15 billion in losses.  Art!

     That there is a Ruffian gas plant burning off their gas instead of exporting it to Europe, because if they shut down the gas wells, they very probably won't be able to get them started again, and this is how up to 88% of Ruffia's gas is being used.  

     So, to sum up, there is a very large market for gas, especially LNG, it's just that nobody wants to purchase it from Ruffia.  Weep me some salty vatnik tears, Dimya.

Conrad Is ANGRY!

Yes yes yes, it's those Dog Bins! Codeword solutions again.  NO! this is not a tempest in a thimble, it's a symptom of the moral decay that's gnawing at the heart of the country, or - no, hang on, that was a The The lyric, wasn't it?  Apologies, the party going on in my head makes it difficult at times.

     Please allow me to illustrate my grievance.

HAUTBOYS: 'Haute' is French for 'High' so is this to do with pilots in the M8 air force?

     No.  No, it is not.  Checking my faithful Collins Concise Dictionary, it is either a large strawberry (!) or an oboe, from the French 'Haute' for 'High' as I guessed already, and 'Bois' for 'Wood'.  Conrad unsure where the 'high' comes in when talking about oboes as they have the lowest and most sinister of all musical instruments.  Art!

PANGRAM: You what?  This is so obscure it's not even in my CCD.  You see?  You see?  This is the kind of wilful obscurantism I have to endure <rabidly mashes Remote Nuclear Detonator several times>.  Conrad had to resort to teh Interwebz.  Art!

     It's every letter of the alphabet used in a single sentence, trying to aim for 26 letters total.  The one above uses 35.  Go on, admit it, you'd never heard of a PANGRAM either.

CODEX: I just bet this one's derived from Latin <hack spit>.  Let me check.  Aha.  "A volume of manuscripts of an ancient text".  Yes, derived from the Latin <spit hack> for 'Tree trunk'.  Art!

I deserve a codexplanation for this

     Conrad is pretty sure he's read this word in one of M. R. James ghost stories, which date back over a hundred years, which is how WILFULLY OBSCURE this word is.  Thank you, that is all.

Up In The Clouds

Another couple of still from that Imperial War Museum film of the British army in Italy, up on the Asiago plateau to judge from the heights and terrain involved.  Art!

     You can tell this isn't the Western Front - no sandbags, for one thing.  No revetments or duckboards, and the officer is nonchalantly peering over the parapet with a pair of binoculars.  In a Flanders trench this would be an invitation to get sniped dead.  Note the fixed sword-bayonets, and the number of men gathered in this trench implies they're either waiting to make an assault, or they're on stand-to to deter the Austrians.  I think the former, as stand-to tended to be at dawn and dusk, and you don't see any lengthening shadows here.  Art!

     This is one of the British rear-areas, on the reverse slope of a hill or mountain, since there are no trenches.  Once again, not on the Western Front as there are many trees, all intact, and that small insert shows three British soldiers hiking up the hillside with stout sticks, out in the open and not taking cover.  Note that an attempt has been made to cut down at least a few of the countless trees.

Chop Chop Chop

Yesteryon's slicing, rather than chopping, machinery was eminently safe, with care taken in it's design.  Todays is - rather less so.  Art!

     It's driven from a power train on the tractor and is proudly and unashamedly completely free from protective guides, screens or other such namby-pamby accoutrements.  Art!

     Thanks to that very same lack of guides or cover, the disintegrated branches are thrown all over the place, which makes eye protection a good idea.  Should there be a snagging incident, the solo operator is doomed as the controls to shut the motor off are at the front of the cab.

"I've Never Seen Anyone Paint A Target On Their Back Before!"

My Tweet on Twitter (Ha! Take that Elong Tusk!) with the line above has proven popular.  The object of my derision is the chap below.  Art!

"RIA NOVOSTI"

     He popped up at a press conference in Barad-Duh, claiming to have been spying for Muscovy for two and a half years whilst in Ukraine, and was now going to ask for Ruffian citizenship.  As I also mocked, the SBU (Ukrainian intelligence) probably has a sweepstake on how long he'll last, because as a South Canadian in the land of orcs, he's already in peril.

     Another Tweeter cynically wondered what sex crimes he was fleeing from in South Canada - which may be a wicked slander, except South Canadians fleeing to Ruffia after being charged with ghastly sexual offences does have a significant Venn diagram overlap.

Finally -

Do I still have that two-pound loaf tin?

If I Were To Say "Pontoon"

You Might Think I Was Whanging On About That Card Game

I've never played it and am not generally keen on card games, although I do keep a pack of cards since some wargames rulesets use them instead of, or in addition to, dice.  Art!

No sh

     ANYWAY I thought I'd lead with a picture of the LBTP, as a card game is intrinsically boring, yet since we've already put the signature photo up that will generate on Facebook, let's have a shot of pontoon.  Art!

     In fact I could have gone with the alternate title "Bridging Loans", except that's even duller than a card table.

     ANYWAY AGAIN the type of 'Pontoon' I am talking about is defined by my Collins Concise Dictionary as: "A watertight float or vessel used where buoyancy is required in water, as in supporting a bridge".  It derives from the French 'Ponton', itself derived from the Latin <hack spit> 'Ponto' for 'Punt' itself derived from 'Pons' for 'Bridge', which could lead us down another rabbit-hole about card games were I not there to stamp it shut.  Art!

     The green marks are Austrian bridges, the blue are British bridges, which unfortunately were done in felt-tip and thus went right through the tracing paper I tried to use.
     For Lo! we are back on the First Unpleasantness in Italy, this time on the plain of the Piave River, which was exceedingly flat, and where water was the defining elemental factor, not snow or ice, and one could excavate trenches with an entrenching tool, instead of needing pneumatic drills and explosives.  Art!

"28tth October 1918 Pontoon bridges over the Piave at Maserada"

     As is visible from the map, Papadopoli Island was really a collection of islands, with the Austrians in possession, and for XIV Corps (the British 7th and 23rd divisions and the Italian 37th Division) to get across to the east bank of the Piave, they needed to bridge the Piave and kick out the occupiers.

     This was a lot easier said than done.  The Piave at this point runs very, very fast and even at the few fords it's torrent made passage a dangerous occupation.  Also, at this time of year, rain in the mountains or upper reaches of the river would cause it to rise rapidly and run even faster.  Art!

        This photo gives you an idea of how long the pontoon bridges erected by the Royal Engineers needed to be, and how vulnerable they were to spate conditions, let alone Austrian artillery fire.  The Romans, very wisely, lent Perfidious Albion a company of 'Pontieri', who were specialist engineers experienced with boats and water, and it's dubious if the operation would have succeeded without their help.  The Official History notes here that the British sappers were woefully inexperienced in the erection and maintenance of pontoon bridges, which implies a lack of training and an indictment of their officers.  Bad officers!  Naughty officers!  No biscuit for you!  Art?

     The Romans also loaned the British lots of their pontoon boats, as visible above.  Unlike the British 'blunt' pontoons, the Italian ones had a markedly sharp prow, which enabled them to maintain their position better in fast-flowing waters.  The two figures at second and third to port in the photo above are Pontieri, which you can deduce from their casque helmet, visibly different from the British soldier next to them wearing a Brodie-pattern helmet.  These Pontieri were able to deliver boatloads of tommies to Papadopoli by rowing them across, before the pontoon bridges got put up.  Art!

     This is one of the heavy-duty pontoons that were put into position, in order to allow wheeled vehicles across, which mostly meant artillery pieces and limbers.  Here you can see the pontoons side by side, with no gaps between, in order to support the maximum weight possible, and just visible at the far end is a motor vehicle preparing to cross.
     Of course - obviously! - the real thing was anything but smooth, with several bridges being wrecked by the current when there was heavy rain upstream, and the two British bridges to the north-west having to be dismantled before daylight as they were under Austrian observation.  Art!

     Soldiers of a Highland regiment (identified by kilts) escorting Austrian prisoners of war back to the west bank, via pontoon bridge.  You can see the waters are still somewhat choppy.  Probably the 2nd Battalion the Gordon Highlanders, who at the time were known as the "Gay Gordons".
     
      
Be Distill My Beating Heart

At about this time of year the orcs of Modern-day Mordor begin to target the Ukrainian electrical grid, hitting it with drones and ballistic missiles, in order to force the Ukes to sit in the dark and freeze.

     Up until now.  

     Also, the Ukrainians have not hit any Ruffian oil refineries for several weeks.

     What's going on?  Or, rather, what's not going on?  Art!

     These, to be clear, are Ruffians complaining about lack of electricity, thus having to sit in the dark and freeze, and sit after climbing up 24 flights of stairs thanks to the elevator not working.

     Allow me to put forward a Tweet of mine from 24th October:

Robert Connolly

@ConradConnolly

I'm guessing that there's a lot of redundancy in the russian electrical grid, and orcs freezing to death in winter means absolutely 0% to Putin. Ukraine may be forgoing such attacks to avoid russian tit-for-tat ones on their electrical grid.

     A Youtuber called "Paul Warburg" speculated as of 1st November 2024 that what I suspected may be a real, if secret, arrangement.

The hidden move that proves Putin's getting desperate

     Paul's assertion is that Putin does, in fact, care - or more correctly 'worry' - about what the great unwashed Ruffian public think, and he dare not expose them to another winter like last year, where there were disgruntled Ruffians on the streets of Moscow, keeping warm around bonfires in the street, and other dying of hypothermia.  Art!

Paul.  No grahpics, just Utah

     See first photo in this item.  Money that might have gone to replace or repair infrastructure in Ruffia is instead being squandered in Ukraine and lining siloviki pockets, Art!

"Good enough"

     Conrad suspects that the Ukrainians have found a loophole in this covert agreement, because whilst they have not bombed any refineries of late, they sure are going to town on alcohol distilleries.  Art!

     This is Number Four going up in flames, and whilst Number Five may be alive for the moment, don't count on that moment lasting.

"Elevation"

No, not the U2 song.  This film is only known to me as a trailer, and for at least half of it, I had to wonder if they had finally made a film of "Plague Year", the Jeff Carlson post-apocalyptic sci-fi thriller I'm currently re-reading.  Art!

     Nope.  Mind you, Ol' Jeff might be consulting his attorney, given that the studio seem to have merely replaced his 'machine virus' with a man in a rubber suit.  O, and replacing the barometric safe-zone height of 10,000 feet with one of only 8,000 feet.

To Get To The Chopper

Yes, back to potentially dangerous machinery for chopping up wood.  I should explain that people around the globe chop up tree trunks for firewood as this maximises the surface area available to burn, makes the lumber easy to handle, and helps to build upper-body strength.  Art!

     When they say 'shree' I think they mean 'sheets'.  This design is also far, far safer than the previous ones that required a human operator to physically present the wood for chopping, thanks to an overhead lever that keeps Mister Chopper away from any edged blades.  Art!

     Yes yes yes, more a slicer than a chopper.  So sue me.

A Bit Late For Halloween

As if BOOJUM! was bothered about dates or calendars.  For here we are on 2nd November with another of Berni Wrightson's cartoon creations, if by 'cartoon' you mean lashings of blood and dismemberment.  Here is '29, "All Freaked Out".

     Well, thanks for that painting tip, Berni.  Can you explain exactly what your pigments are depicting?

A Rollercoaster Ride Of Risibility

NO!  That Is Not A Typo

We're not talking about being visible or invisible, rather about being risible.  Although, having raised the spectre - if that's the right noun - of invisibility, I think we can plunder the cinema archives of John Carpenter to bring in a clickbait image.  Art!

     I recall Ol' John, interviewed about this film, stating how he hated doing special effects work, because it was such a bore and required such intensive prolonged work to do properly, a process ak

     ANYWAY I would like to explicate that 'Risible', meaning 'laughable or ridiculous' comes from the Latin <spit hack> 'Risibilis', meaning 'To laugh'.  The 'Rollercoaster' part of today's title is also very apt, as it describes the NASDAQ late performance of the Orange Land Whale's Twitter rip-off, "Trump Media & Technology Group", which has exactly one asset: "Truth Social".  Art!

So much orange!

     Donold Judas Trump seems to miss the point - and also the door handle - that it's very unwise to associate yourself and your political campaign with rubbish, or garbage, as they have it over in South Canada.  That waspish Twitter wit George Takei, always ready with a bon mot, explained that it's not really a Trump garbage truck unless it's on fire.

     ANYWAY, as you may be aware, we have often mocked and scorned the NASDAQ values of DJT's stock, which falls squarely into the category of 'meme stock', in that it has absolutely no intrinsic value.  Art!

BOOJUM!: If You Were To Hear "Pac Man"

     There you can read David Pakman's excellent demolition of TMTG, which has no physical assets, a rip-off product, negative revenue, inverted profit margins and dodgy staff hiring practices.  Art!

     This is the stock value as of 18th April 2024.  It rallied a little, occasionally, before continuing to fall - until the beginning of October, when things began to look verrrrry suspicious.  Conrad has forborn to comment either in bewilderment or moustache-tweaking glee, before seeing if the damned thing would finally either plateau or do the decent thing and drop faster than a thermometer in the British summertime.  Art!

     Imagine that, it climbed rapidly to $51.51 per share, entirely against the trend prior to Elong Tusk getting involved in promoting DJ Tango, as the cynical amongst us might suppose.  Or Putinpot was trying to pimp his puppet and reward him indirectly, rather than just delivering a shipping container full of used notes.  Art!

     Suddenly! the value dropped catastrophically on 30th October, wiping out $18 per share, for absolutely no reason.  Experts like Conrad blame the pistachio harvest in the Sanjak of Novi Pazar being late this year.  Art!

     These kind of wild swings in value cause the regulators at NASDAQ to sweat copiously, and TMTG has already been stopped from trading seven times this week, amid fears about what the market calls 'Volatility' and what Conrad calls 'yoyoing'.  There is speculation that, apart from Eastern European nut harvests, other issues affecting the stock are people gambling on whether Pumpkinhead is going to get back into the Whitehouse.  Well, he could always join the queue and pay for a tour like everyone else.  Art!

     As a comparison, this is the current share value for Paramount, which is valued at about $7 billion dollars, or $3 billion less than TMTG at it's recent peak.  The thing is, TMTG has brought in $1.6 million in revenue this year, as compared to Paramount, which has brought in $14 billion.  So, overall the Orange Land Whale's meme-stock company has been out-performed by eight thousand, seven hundred and fifty times by a company with a sound business model, backed by assets and a very positive revenue flow.

     If Pimpkinhead loses the election next week, as looks increasingly likely, TMTG share prices will instantly plummet to perhaps as little as cents per share.  Tee hee!

 

Further Financial Farragoes 

I wasn't sure there was a plural of 'farrago' but here we are.

     You should surely remember BOOJUM!'s gleeful coverage of the FTX cryptocurrency con, because it exemplified the scamble that is typical of the unregulated crypto industry, a business that has more cowboys than ever appeared alongside John Wayne.  Art!

Samiserable Bankman Fried

     Sam proved that, whilst he may be intelligent, he's not very clever, choosing to go to trial rather than try and stab his accomplices in the back by doing a deal with the Feds.  His end result was a 25 year sentence, hence his stunned expression above.  Art!

Nishad Singhslikeabird

     Here's FTX's ex-engineering director, Nishad Singh, who was spared a prison sentence this week after the trial judge praised his 'co-operation' with the prosecution.  Also claiming he only found out - gasps in shocked horror!- of the fraud a couple of months before it broke.  I think the rest of us would call it 'self-preservation' rather than anything high-flown, matey.

"The War Illustrated Edition 197 5th January 1944"

We've already done the front cover, so let us dive inside and see what it what.  A few blogs ago there were pictures of snow in the north of Italy in December, so be aware that this edition pays more attention to the Far East than usual, where they had monsoons on top of the usual incredibly humid wet heat.  Art!

     Yes, these are scenes from the Land Of Clog, where the bally Hun had blown up the Lower Rhine Dam on 4th December.  This caused a flood that halted operations by the forces of Perfidious Albion, as can be seen in top port photograph, where they are busy writing letters home.  You had to do this in pre-internet days, the horror! the horror!  To starboard is a party of Dutch kids being treated to a Christmas Eve ride in the traditional Bren Carrier (it says here), accompanied by Sint Niklaas and Schwartze Pieter.  The Sint for passing out presents to good children, Pieter to give carry the bad ones off into eternal damnation and hellfire for a severe telling-off.
     To lower port is a young Dutch citizen warning his British liberators that this particular shop is known for gouging foreigners.

     At bottom is one of the more miserable occupations, sentry-go on a load of flood timber at Elst, keeping a weather-eye on the Teutons and what they are or are not doing.  Art!

This is the only relevant picture I could find, and it was the Ooijhuis dike the Teutons blew up, rather than a dam, which is neither here nor there as water is still wet, wherever it originates from.

Talking Of Rollercoasters .....

Unlike stock markets across the world, international exchange rates do not sleep, meaning you can get live data about any currency you wish when you want it.  Yes, even for that international pariah the ruble.  Art!

    You have to admit that it looks remarkably like a Big Dipper.

      No, it hasn't yet hit 100 to the dollar - but it will, it will!

When Mathematics Is Amusing

Tensor calculus is not a subject matter one associates with hilarity, nor the rest of mathematics for all that.

     However - a word that was guaranteed to sneak in here at one point or another - I just laughed out loud at a sidebar item on the BBC's website.  Art!

     A pair of Ocker mathematicians with more time on their hands that they knew what to do with have calculated that, yes, 200,000 chimpanzees typing nonstop will eventually churn out the works of Shakespeare, apart from the minor caveat that it would take longer than the universe's lifetime.

     Ooops.

     We are imagining immortal monkeys who need no sleep, food or water, too.

     What made me chortle is that, in real llfe, it would take a single chimp it's entire lifetime to merely eventually type out 'Bananas'.  Or - is that just me?

Finally -

November has arrived, bringing with it a funereal chill allied with a certain dankness that seeps into the bones.  Terrific.