A Reprise Of 'Slaedepatruljen Sirius'

You Know Conrad Loathes Donold Judas Trump

With a citric vengeance, and up to now I've been saying that the worm in his brain wriggling about in it's wakeful hours is what causes him to blather nonsense, like "Let's invade that bastion of evil, the Sanjak Of Novi Pazar!" or "Covfefe!".

     What if I'm wrong?  

     What if the worm in his brain is what keeps him sane?  And when it goes to sleep he fires up his walnut of wisdom and complains that "Greenland isn't green, it's mostly white" or "The Saint Jack of Navy Pizza is in the Pacific, right?"

     His bloviating has brought Denmark and Greenland into the public view, mind, and Conrad is now delighted to be able to capture stills from a recruitment video (in Danish) about the "Slaedepatruljen Sirius", which we have covered before as the Royal Danish Navy's Sirius Dog-sled Patrol".  Art!

Greenland the white (and grey)

     This video clip starts with a chap we'll call 'Ulf', because we can and he can't answer back.  One of his cautions is that you have to keep moving to avoid frostbite.  Another was that, should you fall through the ice and lose your kit, you have to ski on to the nearest refuge.  In Ulf's case it took him 23 hours to cover the 100 kilometres.  Art!

     From what I already covered, you can only join The Patrol after completing your conscription in the Danish armed forces and, although they offer equal opportunities for females, none have ever bothered to apply.  Art!

Slaede og hunde

     Here's one of their enforcers: Art!

     The venerable South Canadian Enfield 1917, so-called because that's when it was introduced.  These revenants are used because they perform faultlessly and reliably in sub-zero temperatures.  You're probably wondering what kind of criminals they breed in Greenland that The Patrol needs this kind of firepower.  Well, they're used with special armour-piercing ammunition to deal with unruly musk ox or polar bears, both of which are very large animals that require an awful lot of stopping.  Art!

     Ulf describes being outdoors in conditions where it can reach minus 40⁰ Centigrade, and where you instantly get icicles in your beard.  That clip above shows one of The Patrol setting up a tent in driving wind, which cannot be any degree of fun at all.  Art!

     I believe 50 of those locations are refuge huts, to be used in emergencies, and which are always stocked with food and medicines, just in case.  Probably don't need a fridge to store the scoff.  Art!

     To minimise risks, or at least mitigate them to a reasonable level, when The Patrol sends out a patrol, they send a pair of men, who are then stuck with each other, especially if the weather turns bad (see above).  Being allergic to dogs would be a bit of a stinker, too.  Art!

     A rather terrifying prospect.  O, wait!  He means pull the dog's teeth and carry out surgery on them, rather than his sledge-buddy.  Although, still .....

     The Patrollers tour of duty in Greenland lasts for 2 years, and even if members are now allowed to join whilst still in a relationship, that's a long time and far away (over 1,800 miles).  An individual patrol tour can last for two months, and if it's in the central winter months, you won't see any daylight at all, which would make anyone SAD.  Contrariwise, you do get the sun at midnight, which is a bit of balance.

     That's Danish for 'Special Forces', and you do need to have a special mindset to enjoy working tens of degrees below zero, with a big pack of huskies, keeping a weather eye out for polar bears and being stuck in a tent with someone who farts uncontrollably.

     Conrad rather fondly imagines a bunch of MAGA numpties coming to Greenland to plant a South Canadian flag in the middle of the wilderness and coming face-to-face with The Patrol, or perhaps an unruly polar bear or two.

"A Private Function"

Ha!  Got it.  This is the only film I recall that has a podiatrist within it, except I couldn't recall what the title was a couple of weeks ago.  It stars Michael Palin and Maggie Smith and concerns the austerity of post-war Britain, where food was still rationed.  Art!

Foreshadowing

     The plot centres around a pig being fattened up for a celebration dinner, which is stolen by Michael's character, who I distinctly recall being demeaned as a 'foot doctor'.  Hey hey hey, Adnan said it takes a three-year course to qualify, less of the disrespect, toe the line.  If you see what I mean.

"The War Illustrated Edition 201 2nd March 1945"

As of this date the war in Europe had two months left to run, which was a closed book to those taking part, as they had no idea what the end date would be.   SPOILER 8th of May.  Hope that didn't take all the wind out of your sails.  Okay, back to the montage page that we've been detailing about.  Art!

     Winter in Northern Italy.  Unusually, the picture here names the soldier we see having a cup of char - Sapper R. Vass, hailing from the balmy climes of Surrey, resting his feet alongside the River Santerno.  I'd be a bit dubious about sitting beneath icicles that must weight half a ton, because if they don't drip on you, they may drop on you.

     More jolly boating fun on the Santerno.  Upriver there had been a sudden thaw, which dumped immense quantities of meltwater into the river, immediately raising it by three feet (or a yard) and turning it into a raging torrent.  This has played merry Hob with this pontoon bridge, and sappers are trying to rescue and salvage what they can of it.  Probably cursing, too "If that slacker Vass was here we'd have enough people to manage."  Art!

"Good!" Said Conrad, Gloasting A Little

Okay, gloasting a lot.  Art!

     A series nobody asked for, that seems to exist solely as a cash-grab, and which tries to prostitute the name of Ol' Tolky for the sake of squeezing dollars out of the viewing public.  Conrad hasn't besmirched his eyes by watching any of it but I have seen some excoriating reviews by others who have.  Hopefully "Robothead" will put up another of his hilarious Antipodean-accented destructions of this unworthy airwave botherer, mocking the three people who fervently wish for a third season.  Don't mention the dreadful "Batwoman" series, yes it got three seasons but it was a tax-dodge vehicle, that's the only explanation.  Also it was made as cheaply as possible.

My Fitbit Seems To Have Recovered

For a couple of weeks the battery was running down ridiculously quickly, requiring it to be re-charged daily, which is a pain as Your Humble Scribe uses it daily to time breaks, lunch, cooking times, dog walks, etcetera.

     This may jinx it, but it's not been charged since Friday and is still at 35%.

     Almost a year ago I had a similar run-in with my old Fitbit.  Art!

     Except Mister Sausage Fingers managed to break the charging socket, not simply allow the battery to run down, and that was the end of that.

Finally -

Better get back to Season One of "Lost".  One of the best episodes so far was "Numbers", where the flashbacks are from Hurley's perspective and concern all the terrible things that happen to people around him after he wins the Lottery using a set of verrrrrry dubious numbers.  His uncle dies of a heart attack at the lottery win announcement; the priest at his funeral is struck by lightning; his sister runs off with another woman's husband; his mother breaks her ankle getting out of his brand-new Humvee; the house he bought for her burns down; he gets wrongfully arrested by the police; and the Canadian factory he owned burned down.  But it was over-insured so he made a killing.  Macabre comedy at it's best!  Art?

Keep your distance if you want to live

The High Cost Of -

If This Were Reddit Or Youtube

Then I'd have to use a euphemism like "Un-aliving" or "D***g" because they don't like nasty words like those and will demonetise or block people who don't observe their rules.

    ANYWAY enough whinging about social media conventions, you may have expected me to end today's title as "The High Cost Of Living" but NO! instead it's "The High Cost Of Dying" because once again we're going to look at the misery that is life in Modern-day Mordor.  With thanks to "Joe Blogs" for doing the spadework on this.  See, I give credit where it's due, don't I? Art!

Norilsk by night

     Imagine living in this hell-hole, which stands at Number 3 in the World Suicide Chart, and Number 17 in the Road Accidents Chart, where butter has become so expensive people carry out armed robberies to steal it, and where the humble potato is now a luxury food item.  Anders Aslund, whom we have quoted before, points out that Ruffia is now experiencing the painful double-whammy of stagflation, where the economy is stagnant but inflation keeps rising, despite astronomically high interest rates.  

     ANYWAY that is the high cost of living.  Let us broach the even darker subject matter of the high costs to Ruffia of dying.  Art!

Table courtesy Jake Broe.  Ta, Jake!

     I should have posted this sooner, because Joe's vlog is from 4 days ago and the number of orcs rendered wholly or partially unalive keeps soaring by at least 1,000 per day, so his numbers are going to be obsolete in mere weeks.            as it is, Joe was using figures quoted by Mark Rutte, the head of NATO, of 200,000 dead and 500,000 injured to date.  I know this doesn't jib with Jake's totals, but we'll go with them as being conservative and understated as it's better to err on the side of caution.

     For his analysis, Joe looked at the two primary costs associated with Ruffian casualties: compensation payments and loss of earnings.  Art!

"Daddy's dead but we have a new Lada!"*

     Initially these payments were $68,000 for a dead soldier, with $41,000 for an injury.  As the Special Idiotic Operation dragged on and on, these figures were revised downwards, to $50,000 and $30,000 respectively.

     Joe then naively calculated that 200,000 x $50,000 = $10 billion, and at 500,000 x $30,000 = $15 billion, thus $25 billion in compensation payments total.

     Er - not quite.  Since the very first days the Kremlin has been wriggling out of as many commitments to compensation as possible.  Conrad recalls their refusal to repatriate 7,000 dead orcs whom the Ukrainians had in cold storage, only a few months into the SIO.  If a person is declared 'Missing' then their surviving family gets exactly $0.00.  You'd think after 3 years some of these families might, perhaps, work out that there's something wrong.  Art!

     This is the background to Joe's calculations on Ruffian mean wages - ₽84,000 per month, or rounded out to ₽1,000,000 per annum.  This sounds marvellous, until you realise it's about $10,000.  

     Taking the average Ruffian age of becoming unalive as 35 - we trust you, Joe - and the Ruffian retirement age being 63, this means that the dead and injured will have sacrificed 28 years of earning power.  28 x700,000 x ₽1,000,000 = 

     $196 billion in total, or $7 billion per year, every year, for 28 of them.  Joe is using the conservative totals here, because otherwise as of today it would be $232 billion, or over $8 billion per annum.  The overall economy is going to miss this money and the state will lose tens of billions in taxes that will never be collected.

     Ooooops.  Of course - obviously! - Charlie Chipmunk Cheeks doesn't care about this because the long-term effects will be impoverishing Modern-day Mordor when he will be safely long dead.  Art!

     Joe also put it about that currently there are 9 job vacancies for every employee in Ruffia, which is an illustration of how badly the employment market has been affected by orcs getting un-alived so prodigiously and consistently.  Prior to the SIO the gap would be made up with migrant workers.  Now they are staying away from Ruffia as the risk of being press-ganged into the army is very real, and the feeble ruble is another incentive to stay away.

     Whatever would Sauron say!

Welcome Back Hazegreyart!

It's been a long time since we had one of Ol' Hazy's animations on the blog, as I feel a bit guilty using his stuff.  It must take him aeons to create them, and then Conrad comes along like an ingrate and - er - 'borrows' them.

     I noticed a picture in the 'Shorts' section of Youtube, thought it resembled the 'Fireflash' from "Thunderbirds", so I clicked on it and - Art!

      He manages a really compelling 'heat ripple' effect over the runway tarmac.  It's also very NOISY, as this puppy can attain and sustain a cruising speed of Mach 6.  Which, for your information, is twice as fast as the fastest aircraft ever built, the Blackbird.  Art!

      There is just one drawback of this aerial wonder - it is powered by a nuclear reactor, so you absolutely do not want it to crash, or even land heavily.  Art!

     4,600 miles per hour.  Or, if you like, from London to Canberra in 140 minutes.  Or, London to Paris in 3 minutes.  This thing goes like stink.

"The War Illustrated Edition 201 2nd March 1945"

We  continue to deconstruct the centre-page montage, which consists of pictures taken in Italy.  Northern Italy, to be precise, where winter holds sway.  Cast away your preconceptions of sunshine and warmth.  Art!

     The accompanying blurb has it that Lieutenant Cheney, who hailed from the considerably flatter and less extreme climes of Kent, could only get around on skis, since there was so much snow.  He needed to travel to get around the positions his platoon were holding in the Apennine Mountains.  Art!

     That's the Apennines in orange, so you can't get away from what might be described as the 'backbone' of Italy, or not unless you debouch into the very North, which has it's own mountain ranges.  Italy and mountains go together.

World Holocaust Day

It would be harder to get any darker than our Intro today, but this title gets there and then some.

     We have occasionally covered the Holocaust in passing, as it's just too vile a subject to enthuse about.  Art!

     This book is one of my exceptions to the rule, being an extremely detailed analysis - and destruction of - David Irving's pro-Nazi works, which had masqueraded as objective historical fact.  Irving has since vanished from public sight, which is a species of justice, thanks to comprehensively losing his libel case and being hit with swingeing legal fees.

     Conrad also recalls Albert Speer's rather whitewashy autobigraphy, where he met one of his Nazi compatriots, who was still pale and shaken after a visit to what he described as a 'camp' at Oświęcim in occupied Poland.  "If you are invited to visit, refuse.  Never, ever go there," advised his NAZI pal.  That's the Polish form of '"Auschwitz", which esteemed historian Alan Bullock succinctly described as 'Anus Mundi': the bottomhole of the world.  Art!

    Ol' Pete also works in a lot of detail about concentration and extermination camps being liberated by the Allies.  Whilst British, French, Canadian and South Canadian soldiery had objectively known about these establishments, coming across them in real life was an eye-opener of ghastly proportions.  Teuton soldiers in the vicinity were frequently un-alived rather than becoming PoWs.

Finally -

Wowsers, what a buzzkill I am.  Conrad is now going to depart and cook things in the kitchen.  Tomorrow may see us being more cheerful!**

*  This is neither fiction nor exaggerated.  I've seen a clip of proud parents showing off their brand-new Lada, bought with the compensation money from their dead son.

**  Or maybe not.

The Transporter

In Order To Annoy The Orange Land Whale

Donold Judas Trump, to be clear, you might think that this Intro was about the very edification of 'woke', that being a porter who was trans.  Art!

     The comic genius Will Hay, who was also a talented amateur astronomer, and gayer than the entire city of Paris.  Which is not trans, but deserves an honourable mention.

     Nor is this Intro about the incomparable Jason 'The Stath' Statham, a man built to feature in action films, and that finely-focussed film of his, "The Transporter".  Art!

     Not as fun as 'Crank' but a thorough blast nonetheless.  Apparently Donold didn't like it as there was too much talking and the plot was too complex.  

     You can tell that Conrad, BOOJUM! and the entire editorial staff are all wilfully perverse, because if we wanted to entice an audience, we'd have led with The Stath and his picture, which is far more contemporary than a black and white film from the Thirties.  Eighty-eight years ago, egad.

     ANYWAY of course - obviously! - we are actually concentrating on the teleportation stroke matter transmission system from that obscure Sixties sci-fi television series "Star Trek" which was called 'The transporter'.  Art!

     The Transporter was used to teleport (or trans-mat, if you will) a small group of people or artefacts from the 'Enterprise' in orbit to a planetary surface, without having to use either a shuttlecraft or to land the starship itself.  Given that the Enterprise was about the most un-aerodynamic ship in the history of science fiction to date, that option was out of the window right away.  You will note that it did carry a shuttlecraft, for situations where matter transportation was unfeasible or impossible, which shows a fair degree of redundancy planning.  Art!

     

Spoofed endlessly

     The Transporter lent itself to create dramatic tension, especially in it's recovery function where it transported people back to the Enterprise, because there were any number of things that could go wrong - and which frequently did.  Who can forget Captain Kirk about to be annihilated by the Doomsday Machine as he rode a derelict heavy cruiser starship into it's gaping maw?  Art!

Squeaky bum time!

     Definitely one of the best moments in one of the best episodes of "Star Trek", perhaps because it was written by a proper sci-fi author, Norman Spinrad, rather than a studio hack with a typewriter and bottle of bourbon for inspiration.  Art!
     

     This is a collection of short stories that all coalesce around the theme of matter transmission, running the gamut from this technology's inception in the late 20th century to the far distant future, where it's taken for granted as being part of everyday life.  The cover picture is a rather elaborate way of introducing what the stories are about, and the title emphasises that matter transmission means you can walk through a 'doorway' and emerge one step later in a different part of the galaxy.  Conrad distinctly remembers the story "No War, Or Battle's Sound" where the matter transmitter is going to be used by the sinister Edinburghers to become their invasion gateway.  They could send troops, tanks or pre-aimed ICBMs though such a portal, in order to add Earth to their 'Greater Celtic Co-Prosperity Sphere', which is a sly dig at the Japanese of Second Unpleasantness vintage.  Art!

     This is the 1958 iteration of the film, which again deals with matter transmission, this time as carried out by a lone scientist.  He goes through a rather sketchy set of tests on inanimate objects, then small animals, and makes a giant leap of faith that leads him to develop trans-mats big enough to trans-mat a member of Hom. Sap.  Conrad cannot but help feel that this research and development cycle has been speeded up to the point of hazard.

     In what ought to be a patent lesson in laboratory sterility procedures, he manages to transport both himself and a common housefly, resulting in his gaining the head and left arm of a fly.  The fly, which had been minding it's own business up to that point, ends up with the head and left arm of a human.

     Using poetic licence, The Scientist Who Meddled With Subjects Man Was Not Meant To Know (a.k.a. 'Andre') retains his human mind - at least for a while.  He finds himself becoming more fly-ish over time and needs to try and find the fly he swapped body parts with.

     I won't spoil the ending except to say that it's not all happy gambolling lambs and rainbows.  Art!

Buzz buzz a diddly?

     If any of you out there ever invent a matter transmitter, please observe proper clinical standards of cleanliness and sterile lab procedure; Andre mangled his atoms with a fly, just imagine if it had been a spider or woodlouse!  Or a slug.  Or a piece of discarded orange peel.  Or <Cont. Page 94>

"The War Illustrated Edition 201 2nd March 1945"

We can now put up a few photographs of this edition as there's a notable absence of other military matters in today's blog.  So far.  Art!

     The caption to this one states that this infantry section is replacing other front line troops of the 5th Army, which is a tad curious.  The 5th Army, you see, was composed of South Canadians, whereas this infantry section is British (or Commonwealth or Italian Co-Belligerent Forces), who came under the aegis of 8th Army.  It may be that they are working at the junction of both 5th and 8th Armies, or the caption writer made a boo-boo.  If they did then thousands of correspondents will write and educate them.  Art!

     An interesting photo here.  The caption states that these are Italian troops, manning a British 17 pounder anti-tank gun, so they are members of the Italian Co-Belligerent Forces.  These troops were all volunteers, serving alongside the British and equipped by them, hence the British battledress, helmets and honking big anti-tank gun.  They are rarely mentioned in histories of the campaign in Italy but added 200,000 men to the Allied forces in the peninsula.  The only works I remember mentioning them are "Eclipse" by Alan Moorhead and "Monte Cassino" by Professor Caddick-Adams.

I'm Sorry, Who?

Conrad, as you ought to know already, is not much of a one for following celebritutes on social media or in the <ahem> Main Stream Media, so this picture utterly baffled me.  Art!

     The BBC didn't bother to inform us with a surname for 'Sophie', so I have no idea who she is or was.  Royalty?  Actress?  Reality TV?  Lithium wafer battery designer?  Pig breeder?  Who knows.  I know I don't care, not one bit.

     Bah!

I'm Sorry, What?

You ought to have already read Conrad's pontifications about matter transmission and teleportation above.  Whilst I was checking out a website that featured "The Doomsday Machine" what did I come across?  This.  Art!

     Yessssssssss.  Or no.

     'Cosplay' is a portmanteau version of 'Costume Play', which refers to people who dress up in costumes that resemble those of film, television or - especially - manga characters.  This ad seems to be targeting the 'Furries', who dress up as various animals.  I have no idea how this 'tail' is attached AND DON'T WANT TO KNOW as it's probably NSFW.

     I bet Donold would suffer a myocardial infarction were he to be exposed to Furry Cosplay.

Finally -

No Edna, you cannot lick the plate!  The plate, for your information, held half a 'Nduja' pizza, and even though I picked all the jalapenoes off it, it still packed quite a picquant punch.  Despondent Doggo can look as desperate as she wants, there will be no licking of plate.

Booking Lack

 A Lack Of Booking?

Well, no.  I merely switched around the initial letters from 'Looking Back', because that, gentle reader, is how we roll here.  Don't complain, I could be typing in Estonian or Romanian instead of the Mother Of All Languages, English.  Art!  Clickbait picture now!

     This series was the polar opposite of "Department S", which we have been featuring of late.  'Quiller' was a downbeat British government agent who never carried a gun, but who was sent by his anodyne employers, 'The Bureau', to investigate various dangerous situations around the world.  Art!

Close but no cigar

     This particular beast is 'Voyager One', equipped with the terrifying 'Queller Drive', which emits fast neutrons and is capable of destroying all life on an entire planet - accidentally.  Queller, Quiller, mutatis mutandis <hack spit>

     Let's get on with the links, shall we?

2024

BOOJUM!: Blank Tanks

2023

BOOJUM!: Another Tale Of Corporate Cretinocracy

2022

BOOJUM!: The Cuckoos Of Midwich

2021

BOOJUM!: Sir Thomas Malory Did It First

2020

BOOJUM!: The Pineapple Tin Factor

2019

BOOJUM!: How Very Arous-ing

2018

BOOJUM!: Brains!

2017

BOOJUM!: Wherewith Of Words

2016

BOOJUM!: George Orwell And His 9/10's Rule

2015

BOOJUM!: Quickly! Keep Up As I Type

2014

BOOJUM!: Experimentally Early

If I Were To Say 'Bergmann"

You Might Well Think I Was Referring To The Swede

Ingmar Bergman is the chap you're thinking of, probably best known for the comedy classic "The Seventh Seal".  No, I'm lying, it's entirely devoid of humour or laughter in any way, being as bleak as the windswept uplands of Upsala.  Art!

The Knight plays chess with Death.  As I keep saying, a man's got to have a hobby

          Well, I actually refer to the Bergmann Maschinenpistole MP28.  This was an improved and updated version of the original as used in the First Unpleasantness, and set a benchmark for quality and utility.  It's use in the Spanish Civil Unpleasantness caused the Sinisters and Teutons to begin re-evaluating their attitude towards submachine guns, which had become irredeemably associated with South Canadian gangsters in the Twenties and Thirties.  Art!

Chambered for 9 mm ammunition

     Here in Perfidious Albion we were rather slow on the uptake with sub-machine guns and had no native version when the Second Unpleasantness broke out.  In assessing the various models, the best was unquestionably the Finnish Suomi, which was unfortunately not available for purchase, Finland having been invaded by the Sinister Union.  Bummer.  That South Canadian 'gangster gun', the Thompson, however - my favourite word! - was available, though it was a complex and very expensive weapon.  They were ordered from across The Pond and issued to British soldiery.  Art!

     In case you missed it, sub-machine guns use pistol ammunition, rather than rifle rounds, making them compact.  The Thompson used the .45 calibre round, for your information.

     Buying these costly weapons was very much an interim measure, as HM Treasury wanted to save money, so a domestically-produced SMG was required.

     Enter the Lanchester.  This was a straight-up copy of the Bergmann MP1928, just re-designed by Mr. Lanchester to suit British production methods.  Art!

Chambered in 9 mm

     One design innovation was the attachment of a bayonet mounting at the muzzle, allowing a pig-sticker to be fixed in place.  The British like their bayonets.

     Now, one reason I've created this Intro is because it follows on from a recent Q & A Ian from "Forgotten Weapons" put up, where he was asked about the British having SMGs in both .45 and 9 mm calibre.  Wouldn't it have been more logical to design the Lanchester in .45 calibre, in order to simplify ammunition production and logistics?

     Not really, explained Ian.  The Lanchester was chosen to have a decent gun now, rather than a good gun in six months time.  Making the weapon in another calibre would mean completely re-designing it - again - and delay the whole acquisition process.  This was undertaken in the autumn of 1940, when it was assumed the Wehrmacht's next target would be Perfidious Albion, and the requirement was for an SMG now, that could be issued before the invaders arrived.  Art!

Ian holds forth

     An initial production run of Lanchesters was begun, with an anticipated total of 50,000 being aimed for.  Except that never happened and the few that were made were taken by the Royal Navy, not the Army.  Why so, I hear you ask?

     Well, because the pairing of Major Shepherd and Mr Turpin came up with the 'Sub-machine carbine N.O.T. 40/1" in January of 1941.  You might know it better as - Art!

The Sten gun

     Shepher, Turpin and ENfield.  This was a really cheap SMG, and the lack of production finish caused initial jeering from unimpressed soldiers, until it was realised that this stamped-metal wonder was quite as good at slaying Teutons as the Thompson.  For Your Information, the cost of a single Thompson was £52 in 1940, whereas a Sten could be churned out for all of £2.87, so you could manufacture 18 of them instead of a single tommy-gun.  Over four million of them were produced, all in 9 mm, which ammunition Perfidious Albion had begun to produce in quantity in it's own factories instead of buying from South Canada.  HM Treasury makes happy face.  The Birmingham Small Arms factory at Tyseley cranked them out at a rate of 20,000 per week or one million per annum, which shows how wise it was to choose this design instead of, say, copying the Thompson.

     See what you started, Ol' Bergie?

Finally!

No, this is not the usual coda to the blog.  Art!

     This concerns the sunken Ruffian tanker 'Volgoneft-239', which sank in a winter storm in the Kerch Strait on December 16th last year.

     It's taken the Ruffians over a month to bother salvaging the remaining oil aboard the sunken hull, and in the meantime 2,500 tons of the original 4,000 ton cargo has contaminated the Ruffian resort beaches along their Black Sea coastline.  According to official sources, 170,000 tons of contaminated sand has been collected and, if I know the Ruffians at all, it's been dumped in sacks back on the beaches it was collected from.

     One wonders why it took so long for this clean up to occur, and the answer probably lies in Charlie Chipmunk Cheeks bloviating about how bad this ecological disaster was, earlier in January.  If The Little Tsar prognosticates then his minions have to guess his intent.

Our Journey With Bernie

Continues.  Let me do the due diligence once more.  Aha, a run of three cards that aren't present on teh Interwebz.  Do you see how much effort I put into these items?  Let us pick up with #70 "Up For Air".  Art!

     In case you cannot resolve the text, here it is: "A recurring image from my childhood.  I was six.  My mom took me to see my very first movie in a theatre.  'The Creature From The Black Lagoon' in 3D yet.  Yeahhhh.'

     Now we know.  No blather about what ink or pens he used or if it's on canvas or paper.  Ta, Bernie.

Roll The Dice

Conrad, in his traditional cruel style, has been mocking Ruffian airlines over on Twitter.  Anyone who gets on a Ruffian airliner risks death, as was proven overnight.  "An-24 rolled off the landing strip in the Khabarovsk region and crashed into the bushes today (see video). No casualties were reported. The plane's engine allegedly failed during takeoff." Art!

Also "a flight traveling from Moscow to Istanbul had to make an emergency landing in Astrakhan. Aeroflot said the Boeing 737-800 plane had "technical issues"

     So, I stuck my oar in. 

"Ruffian airlines: roll a D20. 1 - 10 no problems, arrive safely. 11 - 15 turn back mid-flight due to unspecified emergency. 16 - 19 crash and burn, roll a D6: 1 - 2 survive unscathed; 3-4 badly injured; 5-6 die horribly.

20 shot down by Ruffian SAM battery."

     What can I say?  I've been playing that 'Totensontag' board game.  Art!

     The official investigation into the downing of the Azeri airliner was that, yes, an idiot Ruffian Pantsir commander gave the order to shoot it down, confusing it with a drone.

No TWI today, there's quite enough military material here already.

Finally -

Yes, this is the blog's coda for today.  I'm looking out of the window and not liking the weather out there: cold, windy, raining and just about the definition of a dirty day.  Nor do I need to venture down to Lesser Sodom as the Sunday Stew from last week is still present in large amounts, and I defrosted a batch of Posh Dog sausages.  Or should I have those Thermidor Prawn cakes?  Decisions decisions.

     That's it for today, pip pip toodleoo!