Our Sunday's Sophistry

I Am Being Merciful

By not posting in either Finnish or Romanian.  I have learned a new word for Ruffia that the Finns use, as to them the word 'Rus' is the equivalent of their Swedish neighbour, so they avoid using that.  Instead they use "Venäja".   You can copy and use this word yourself, it is perfectly SFW as I've already checked, because we value our reputation as being a world-leader in SFW scrivel.  Art!

Close enough

     Let's roll out the links.

2024

BOOJUM!: Today We Tell Of Anchors

2023

BOOJUM!: The First Order

2022

BOOJUM!: FTX!

2021

BOOJUM!: Something's Gone Badly Right

2020

BOOJUM!: Chop And Change

2019

BOOJUM!: Attack Of The Brolly-Men

2018

BOOJUM!: Make Mine Manchester

2017

BOOJUM!: Styx And Pieces Of Eight

2016

BOOJUM!: Conrad Is Seething!

2015

BOOJUM!: Twinky Junky Gets Funky!

2014

BOOJUM!: In Defence Of Classical Organ Music

2013

BOOJUM!: Scatter My Data Day

A Penny Weighed Is A Penny Spurned

Excuse Me, I Was Massing The Math

Or mathing the mass, Conrad unsure which.  For this Intro, we are once again going to be dealing with MalCom, or Malicious Compliance, rendered back upon yet more MalCom.

     That crack about 'Mass' refers to <consults new 'Collins Concise English Dictionary' Christmas present> "A physical quantity expressing the amount of matter in a body" or, in plain English, how much an object weighs.  Art!

Remember this, it matters

     The tale is narrated by Philanthropic Repairs Owner, hereafter PRO, who ran an neighbourhood electrical and electronics repair shop, with the unusual additional presence of young people aged sixteen plus.  The intent was for them to do something productive and useful whilst also earning when not in school or college.  Young people in South Canada need money, doncha know.

     This saga begins when a Karen brought an electronic device in for repair.  We don't know what kind of device as it's never mentioned so don't bug me about it.  Art!

Possibly a veeblefetzer like this

     Normally the bill for four hours of work and the parts would have been $220 but PRO discounted the charge to $100, which seems pretty generous if you ask me.

     Karen, pretty obviously, did not consult Conrad on the matter.  That was her First Mistake.  She objected to the bill, loudly, in the front office with the receptionist, whom she also objected to because they were torturing puppies to death in front of her wearing a pride badge.  She objected to the work that had been done, she then claimed something else in the Mysterious Device (possibly a veeblefetzer) had been broken, then that the teenager who worked on it didn't know what they were doing.  Then comes the strident call of a Karen in full flow: "I want to see the manager!"

     PRO popped out of his back office kingdom, explained that the work had been done correctly, under his supervision, nothing had been broken and the bill was payable when the veeblefetzer (or another Mysterious Device) was collected.  Art!

     Karen's Second Mistake was then flourishing a credit card, because PRO's business didn't accept her brand of card.  One suspects that they did, actually, but he wanted a bit of payback for her insolence and insulting behaviour.

     You can tell this is South Canada because she then paid with a cheque, which you hardly ever see here in Perfidious Albion any more, and which was her Third Mistake.

     ANYWAY PRO paid the day's cheques into the business's bank account, only for them to call him the next day to say one cheque had bounced due to insufficient funds.  Guess which one?  Art!

     PRO, probably dreading it, called Karen and said her cheque had bounced due to lack of funds, meaning she'd need to come into the front office to pay in person, with an additional fee for the cheque.

     This is where Karen made her Fourth Mistake, because she then makes a special trip to the bank, before coming into the front office carrying a weighty bag, after climbing up the stairs to the Second Floor.  She dumps this first bag on Reception's desk and announces she's there to pay the bill, but has to go get the other bags.  No, she doesn't know how many there are, the tellers at the bank loaded her car for her.

     Smiling like a wolf on the inside, PRO watched as she dropped bag after bag on the desk, all loose coins rather than in coin-rolls, refusing any help offered.  Art!

     The charge for that cheque bouncing was $25, so in total Karen had brought in 12,500 one cent coins.  At 2.5 grams - I apologise for using metric but this works better - each, that's a total of 31.25 kilograms, 65 pounds or over 4 stone.

     Besides feeling hot, tired and sweaty, Karen may have felt victorious at this point.

     Ooops.  As she went to leave, PRO said she needed to wait until ALL the coins were counted, as he didn't trust someone's word who had already passed a bad cheque.  PRO and the receptionist started counting.

     They counted.  Karen waited.

     They counted.  Karen waited.

     They counted.  Karen waited.  Art!

"Time passing", apparently

     I've read another MalCom where a pair of bottomhole customers tried to pay for a couple of pizzas with a huge bag of pennies, only to realise with dismay that the salesperson had to count them all out, and had to start from scratch every time they interrupted.  Eventually they got fed up and paid with folding money.

     Karen's patience ran out and she whipped $125 in cash from her purse and paid the bill.

     'Do you want help carrying these coins back to your car?' enquired one of the teens.

     Karen bolted, shouting 'Keep them!' over her shoulder as if those coins were radioactive, poisonous and explosive.  Art!

    PRO and his teenaged staff then took the bags of coins down to the lobby in the lift Karen had overlooked, then used a bank coin-counting machine to deposit them, then donated that total to a local charity.

     This is perhaps PRO-Revenge and MalCom all rolled into one.

The Christmas Haul

I did wait three days to post this, so don't complain.  Art!

     I am currently using this new CCED, which is subtly different from the ancient and battle-scarred one I got perhaps eight? years ago, and I know you cannot possibly live without knowing what those differences are.  Art!

     As is visible, the alphabetical order is shown on the fore-edge, so you don't have to guess about a word's potential location, and the actual words themselves are in a fetching shade of blue, differentiating them from their definition.  It currently has a dust-jacket, which may not last long given how heavily Conrad uses the CCED.

     I first used it to look up 'Wolverine', given that I'd just watched 'Logan' and wanted to know the derivation.

Thinking-Time Thoughts

I needed to put the hyphen in to avoid you lot speculating about the TARDIS and H G Wells.  I was forbidden to take Edna for trotties, as she'd already been out, it was cold and Wonder Wifey wasn't stressing the Wunderhund.  O well.

     I still went for a walk, because it's conveniently away from any distractions and the thing that came to mind was 'Pykrete'.  Art!

Pair of Pykrete with scarring from bullets

     BOOJUM! has covered this before, in 2017, so I feel it's time to revisit.  Pykrete was a substance named after it's inventor, Geoffrey Pyke, being a mixture of 15% sawdust and 85% water, which set like concrete when frozen.  You can see the bullet impacts above, where the Pykrete has shrugged them off instead of shattering apart.

     Then we come to Project Habakkuk, which was a bonkers plan to create a gigantic aircraft carrier out of Pykrete, in order to cover the Mid-Atlantic Gap of the Second Unpleasantness.  Art!

     It would have been twice the size of the largest aircraft carriers ever built, because - colour me unsure.  The specs for it got ever longer and more demanding, until it was shelved as Perfidious Albion could have bought a fleet of conventional carriers for the same price.  Here is the link to the 2017 article  -

BOOJUM!: When Icebergs Attack

     Don't forget, every word true.  Mostly.

    Did 'Mythbusters' cover Pykrete?  I have a feeling they did, and found a better substrate than woodpulp.  Which is another story from a different kitchen.

It's A Legend

Which is to say, a foot.  Okay, okay, 'Leg end'.  Another entry from the 'Museum Of Failure', this is - Art!

     The Amopé Foot File, which was a battery-powered rotary-action buffer that ground away hard skin on your feet.  Unlike nearly all the other products or services on MOX, it was very good at it's job.  What made it fail, and tank profits, was that the battery lasted for up to three years, meaning no follow-up purchases were necessary and Scholl, the parent company, didn't see any profits from it.

Finally -

To end with another Biercism.

"Self,n.  The most important person in the universe."

Well, That Escalated Quickly

Today We Get The Second Half Of Our Epic Revenge Story

To recap, CHEF - Canadian Highly Efficient Functionary and also a keen amateur chef - had experienced that most heinous of crimes, the Workplace Lunch Thief, whom repeatedly stole his gourmet lunches, which had been created with considerable time and money being spent on them.  HR proved to be completely useless, labelling didn't help so CHEF took matters into his own, very capable hands.  Art!

Not the Co-Operative Society Insurance Society

     He never mentions it but Conrad strongly suspects there is a bit of CSIS experience in CHEF's background.

     ANYWAY he identified the thief as Viridian's Regional Sales Director Chad Miller, which is so unusual in these tales that I suspect 'Chad' is a pseudonym.  Chad "had teeth white enough to reflect, drove a leased BMW and made $180,000 per annum plus commissions."  No excuse for stealing a lunch with a salary like that.  Normally in a story like this CHEF would make up a meal with ghost chilli peppers, the thief would end up getting their stomach pumped and things would revert to what was right and proper.

     Not here.

     What else might Chad - whom we will dub Lunch Others Workplace Edible Stuff Thief, LOWEST hereafter - be up to that was not moral or ethical?  Art!

The Keg Steakhouse, Toronto

     Chad expensed client dinners three nights a week, such as dining out at 'The Keg', as seen above, which is still running.  CHEF had access to Viridian's central expense reporting system and was able to audit individual meals if he wanted.  He wanted.

     One example he checked ran thus: "Expense: dinner with client Weber Industries, Blue Water Grill $450"

     HOWEVER - ah that word I love so much! - the Veridian Customer Relationship Management*, which CHEF religiously cross-referenced, said the WI rep was on leave.  Not only that, LOWEST hadn't been in contact for three months.

     Even more interesting were the Uber reports, which consistently featured LOWEST being dropped off at '1422 King Street', an upmarket area of downtown Toronto.  Art!

1422 King Street

     The awkward thing is, LOWEST lived with his family in Oakville, a completely different area of Toronto.  His mistress lived at 1422, and CHEF - who would have the word 'Thorough' all the way through him if he were a stick of rock - tracked her down on social media to find pictures she had posted on social media, where she was dining with LOWEST.  

     This fraud totalled $14,500 over six months.  CHEF made all the expenses, Ubers, locations, and social media posts into a presentation on an UBS.

     "I needed to make him suffer for the short ribs".  That, ladies, gentlemen and those unsure, is a declaration of war, and another gourmet meal Chad had stolen.  Art!

Coomassie Brilliant Blue Colouring and Maltitol Syrup

      LOWEST was due to give a presentation at the company's town hall, where the CEO, Mister Henderson, would be attending.  CHEF did his research and bought the two liquids above.  CBB stains protein very dark blue and takes days to fade.  Maltitol, in large doses, is an extremely powerful laxative.  CHEF, whom you ought to be rightfully scared of by now, made a batch of brownies using the two above, which LOWEST stole at lunchtime and scoffed.

    Maltitol, for your information, takes up to an hour  to take effect.  

    An hour after having dined on his stolen confectionery, LOWEST goes to make his presentation, where he startles his audience with his dark blue lips, tongue and teeth.  He only gets a few words out before the maltitol works it's sinister magic and he has an accident whilst running to the toilets, where he is stuck for 45 minutes.  Art!

Quite possibly CEO Henderson

     Mister Henderson is not impressed and wonders if anyone else can take over?  Kevin, the head of IT and someone who detested LOWEST more than dysentery, volunteered with the UBS that CHEF had given him.

     For ten minutes the CEO witnesses the fraud LOWEST has been carrying out.

     When Chad emerges from the toilets, he is immediately escorted out of the building by security, carrying a box containing all his effects.

     CHEF - remember that 'thorough' description? - sends an envelope of what he had found to Jessica Miller, Chad's wife.  She files for divorce three days later, getting the house, custody and - O bitter pill! - the BMW.  Art!     

Hamilton, Toronto

     Chad moved into the basement of his parent's basement in Hamilton, a considerably less upmarket location than Oakville.

     CHEF was fuelling up his car three months later when he saw LOWEST putting petrol in a beat-up car, unshaven, pudgy and wearing a tatty old hoodie.  Chad recognised his antagonist, looked at his shoes and drove off without a word.

     Getting back into his own car, CHEF took a bite of his home-made lasagne, which was made with bolognese sauce incorporating wine and milk, bechamel sauce and mozarella.  

     "It tasted like victory".

     Chad shot himself in both feet, then stuck them firmly into his mouth.  Canuckistanians are generally a nice people but push them too far and you get CHEF and his righteous revenge.

Another From The 'Museum Of Failure'

We have covered this before as part of the montage of toys that were incredibly dangerous and which would never get approved today.  Art!

     Quiver at the lawsuits queueing up for 'Jarts Lawn Darts'.  These were large, heavy darts that had a metal spike on the end, which was supposed to stick into the lawn, and which instead stuck into 6,000 children.  'It's not for kids!' bleated the company.  On average 670 children were hospitalised whilst Lawn Darts were available, including injuries causing blindness or brain damage.  These accidents-in-waiting ended up killing three children, at which they were promptly banned and extant stock ordered destroyed, which is kind of a morbid punchline.

Another Gentle Shoeing

Read no further if you're a member of the Donold Judas Trump Fan Club, because you are very much in Wrong Tent territory.  Art!

     Hmmmm the Orange Land Whale appears nervous about the alleged million new documents coming to light about Jeffrey Epstein.  Gosh, I wonder why he could possibly have tried to prevent them from being published?  Not to mention all the Trump administration officials like Kash Patel and Pam Bondi who boldly insisted there were no Epstein files.  Conrad feels someone's been telling porkies!

Slow News Year?

     Unusually, I know whom they are referring to in this case, which is not normally the case in these stupid 'puff' articles.  Note that you can't actually see the jeans, meaning you're supposed to click the link.  Firstly, NO!  And, secondly, BAH!

Slitting One's Throat To Spite One's Neck

I made that up myself, are you impressed?

     ANYWAY this is once again another gentle shoeing of the orcses.  You may recall that their Black Sea Flotilla - so many ships have been sunk they cannot be classed as a 'Fleet' any more - had to evacuate Sevastopol, the primary naval base on the Black Sea.  They relocated to Novorossiysk, where one of their submarines was crippled by a Ukrainian submarine drone.  Ooops.  Art!

     The Ukrainians, who seem to be as thorough as CHEF, hit the only available anti-submarine aircraft the Ruffians had in the region, allowing their drone to get into harbour undetected.  Art!

     They have now sunk three barges at the harbour entrance, preventing any more Ukrainian naval drones to get inside.  

     You may see the flaw here.  The Ruffian ships and subs in the harbour cannot get out.

     Even more worryingly for Mordorvia, Perfidious Albion recently re-supplied the Ukrainians with Storm Shadow missiles, and just used them to demolish a static target, to wit: a factory.  Hmmm where else are there static targets?

Finally -

Another Biercism.

"Comfort,n: A state of mind produced by contemplation of a neighbour's uneasiness."

*  CHEF only used 'CRM'.  You're welcome.

John Sick And Chad Stealheski

Bear With Me For This, It's A Long One

     Yes, we are spoofing 'John Wick' here, which is an excellent action thriller Conrad can definitely get behind, and whom is the director of this franchise?  Why none other than Chad Staheleski.  Art!

     Chad's background prior to this franchise was as a stunt performer and then stunt arranger, and you ought to recall that he got a small on-screen reference in 'V For Vendetta'

     Right!  Ripped from the pages of 'Karma Stories', this is a story that changes in mid-flow, from one of the lowest forms of life in the corporate world, to another lower form of life in the inter-personal world.  We start off with lunch theft and end with thermonuclear war/nuclear revenge/ghost chilli revenge <delete where applicable>.  Art!

     Verrry unusually the narrator gives the name of their firm, 'Viridian', a Canuckistanian logistics business, working out of Toronto.  They name other people but not themselves, although informing that their job is to 'variance reports', whatever they are - ah I see, reports comparing projected to actual economic performance - and optimising shipping routes, anyone working at the company could probably discover their ID.  Art!

     As for the title, you might think of OP as an Everyman, thus a 'John', who was utterly fed-up with what happened to his lunches, hence 'sick', which is only a little bit of a reach.
     ANYWAY OP's hobby was cooking, and as a Commenter observed, they might want to move into catering rather than logistics.  Conrad is merely grateful that the Canuckistanians are on our side and that OP did not decide to go into Military Intelligence, or the world might be a different place.  Art!

     This is OP's version of a Roast Beef Sandwich, made with AAA Canadian prime sirloin, which had been roasted with rosemary and garlic, on home-made bread with caramelised onion and home-made horseradish sauce.  

     Are we hungry yet?  I shall dub OP as 'Canadian Highly Efficient Functionary', hereafter CHEF.  He is single, one presumes, as there is no mention of wife or children, thus allowing him the time, money and ingredients to create haute cuisine in the home.  Art!

     This is his chicken parmesan, where he pounded, seasoned and fried the chicken himself, topped with a home-made marinara sauce.  

     I'm straight and I would straight up marry this guy.

     Then it was beef and Guiness stew with dumplings, mad

     ENOUGH OF THE FOOD PORN!  I needed to confirm the background CHEF established, home-made food of considerable complexity, that he brought into the office for his lunch, packed in what he called a 'Tactical Lunch Bag', which description may date from his days in Military Intelligence/the Perky Pats/catering college <delete where necessary>.  Art!

     We then broach the subject of that most vile of criminals, the Office Lunch Thief.  Conrad has never suffered this offence before but can absolutely 100% agree with the incomprehensible rage from those who have experienced it, because it's an utter betrayal of compatriots, protocol and decent behaviour.  

     In November, CHEF's TLB had gone missing at his 12:00 lunchtime, only to re-appear, empty, at 14:00.  We don't know if any other employee's lunches had gone missing, only that the criminal had now identified CHEF as a - well, chef.  Art!

     HR proved to be completely useless - 'Useless HR' is the prompt for the above - bleating a few platitudes and not making any effort to support CHEF.  This does surprise me somewhat, as British America - Canada if we're being formal - does not generally view their employees as being one step above indentured slaves, as in South Canada.  Wev.

     CHEF decided to resolve the problem themselves.  This is where they reveal themselves to be very technically competent, with a worrying set of skills and knowledge 'from teh Interwebz'.  Yeah right *.  One office lunch thief coming up on the menu.  Art!

You are not selling me on this product

     They made a bait lunch - Italian sub on fresh bread with prosciutto, capsicola, mozarella and balsamic glaze.  Don't ask me what 'capsicola' is, I've never heard of it.  Art!

Capsicola.  I Googled.

     All containers for which were covered with Polychromatic Ultra-Violet Reactive Powder, a dust that you cannot see with the naked eye but which will blast your vision into next week if you use an UV light on it.  Just the sort of thing that instantly appears in your mind when thinking 'How do I get evidence of lunch theft?'

     After the bait lunch was stolen, CHEF used an UV flashlight - yes, yes, any household has half a dozen of these to hand - to track down the thieving culprit.

     Enter Chad Miller, the Viridian Regional Director of Sales, whom is described as having 'teeth white enough to reflect radar', and whose office looks like an UV abattoir when CHEF uses his UV flashlight in Chad's office.

     Ooops.

     I hope the title begins to make a little more sense now.

     In any regular story of Office Lunch Theft, CHEF would dose up his meal with, as hinted above, ghost chilli peppers, or essence of liquorice, but CHEF was not going to be satisfied with anything as trivial as that.  O noes.

     Conrad isn't going to continue with this Intro because it would otherwise be the whole blog, as we can't have that.

There I Was -

Scrolling through the news feed, wondering what might come up that I can purloin, what did I come across but this?  Art!

     Conrad is one of seven people in the UK who know whom Ambrose was, and whom own a copy of 'The Devil's Dictionary'.  

    The photo above shows Ambrose in later life, when he had not mellowed AT ALL, and was just as wittily horrid as he'd been since the end of the South Canadian Civil War.  

In 1913, at the age of 71, Ambrose Bierce began a tour of Civil War Battle fields.

     For Your Information, the South Canadian Civil War, which was inordinately uncivil, ended in 1865.  Bierce had seen some pretty awful things during it's duration, so one might well wonder why the nostalgia about revisiting old battlefields. He was at that time supposedly heading south into Mexico and their civil war, but vanished utterly and his remains have never been found.  Art!

     

     Had he survived a year longer, one wonders what he would have made of the First Unpleasantness and whether it would have summoned him to Europe.  We shall never know but I bet some sci-fi author is thinking about it.

You'll Be Reading This One Day Late

Here I am, reading through Twitter, as I have been off on social calendar events today, and it appears that the Sinister Union collapsed on 26/12/1991, bemoaned by only Putinpot.  Art!

     The flags, lest ye be unaware, are of the various Sinister 'republics' that were a constituent part of the dictatorial empire, which have broken away and which have ENTIRELY NO INTENTION OF GOING BACK.  The blue-and-yellow one is causing a multi-plicitous horde of problems for the orcses at present.

Talking Of Vanishings -

You may not be up to speed on the minutiae of the war in Ukraine, so I shall briefly fill you in: the Ruffians, in the person of General Sergey Kuzovlev, loudly announced that they had captured the Ukrainian city of Kupyansk!  Victory parades, confetti, stamps printed with the town image on, EXCEPT - Art!

     Oooops.

     In fact, the orcses have completely lost control of the city, which is nevertheless going to be persistently attributed to falling to Ruffian arms, until it either happens or Putinpot drops dead.  I know which I want to occur first.

     NB Sinister-era generals in the Sinister Union used to try this tactic with Stalin during the Second Unpleasantness, whom, to give him his credit, he absolutely hated.  He would punish them for it.  Putinpot?  Not so much.

Finally -

Because Conrad loathes the telephone as one of the worst possible modern inventions, let me close with a Biercism:

'Telephone,n: An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep their distance.'

     To which I absolutely concur.

*  CSIS vibes here

Battleships!

Rather Than Throw This Away In An Item

I thought I'd pontificate at length in an Intro about battleships, because Donnie Dorko did indeed claim that South Canada was going to create a new type of 'Trump-class battleships', the drivelling loon.  Conrad thinks this must be because he'd seen the documentary 'Pearl Harbor' and was puzzled and upset that South Canada doesn't have any battleships.  Art!

The, ah, 'documentary' in question

     The concept of fleets of battleships going to war with one another upon the briny deep is, of course - obviously! - British, and dates back to 1906, when H.M.S. 'Dreadnought' was launched, immediately rendering every existing battleship obsolete.  Art!

Judge Dread

     She - the relevant pronoun even for naval warships, as mentioned in 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang' - did away with the clutter of smaller guns that had been de rigeur,    The Dreadie mounted ten 12" guns and two dozen 12-pounders as protection against torpedo boats.  Her steam turbines could propel her at 21knots, which is 24 PROUD IMPERIAL MILES per hour, a hefty clip for an 18,000 ton vessel.  Art!

The Royal Navy showing off in 1914

     The year before Dreadie was launched had seen the first ever clash of battleship fleets, at the Tsushima Straits in the war between Ruffia and Japan, where the Ruffian fleet got an absolute shoeing for very little Japanese loss.  An interesting footnote is that the Ruffians built their own warships whilst the Japanese were all built at Scottish shipyards on the Clyde.  Tsushima showed that the Ruffians could sail a fleet around the world <polite golf clapping> but were completely outclassed by the far better trained Japanese in their uniformly more modern ships.  Art!

     

     Round Two for battlefleets of battleships was the Battle Of Jutland in 1916, where the Senior Service lost more ships than the Teutons.  One reason for this was the lack of preventive designs to stop the 'flash' from exploding enemy shells from reaching magazines.  Another was that the action was fought close to Germany itself, allowing damaged Teuton vessels to reach port before sinking.  Overall it might have been a tactical success for the Teutons but the strangulating Royal Navy blockade was not ended, and the Teuton fleet never put to sea again.  

     I believe one of my 'British Official History Naval Operations' goes into Jutland in verrrry detailed style, with maps and shizzle, but we're not going there today.

     During the Second Unpleasantness the battleship proved to have become redundant, displaced by another British invention - you're welcome - the aircraft carrier.  Art!

     One of the coffin nails for battleships was the sinking of the Royal Navy's battleship 'Prince of Wales' and the battlecruiser 'Repulse' by Japanese aircraft on December 10th 1941.  There were no Japanese ships involved, and the British had no aircraft.  

     When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour IN REAL LIFE DONOLD, they inflicted immense damage on the South Canadian navy BUT failed to sink or damage any of the 'flat tops' as they were all at sea.  This failure was decisive, because whilst a battleship may be able to fire shells out to twenty miles, an aircraft can carry a bomb or torpedo for two hundred miles.  Thus the opposing ships in the Battle of the Coral Sea never even saw each other; it was all air action.  Art!

     Today, missiles with a range of dozens of miles, massing a far bigger payload than a humble shell, are used in naval combat.  The Royal Navy's losses in the Falklands were due to air-launched missiles and air-dropped bombs, not by Argentinian ship action.  The big-gun battleship is extinct and cruisers are the largest naval vessels in inventories now.  The last time South Canada used battleships in anger was 1991 in support of Operation Desert Storm, where they were used for shore bombardment.  They got away with this because the Iraqi navy was non-existent and the Iraqi air force had already been destroyed.  Art!

     Donold Judas Trump also has no concept of how long it takes to build a battleship, nor of how much it costs, because he has the attention span of a fruit fly and has other people to do sums for him.  He will be out of office by the time any of these ships get to be launched, IF they ever get commissioned in the first place, because why have a far larger, more vulnerable, more costly guided-missile battleship when you can have guided-missile cruisers?  That will do the same job but cost a fraction of the final price.

     That Dog Buns! doc 'Pearl Harbor' has a lot to answer for.

     Right!  Enough military blather, let's have a change of topic.

They Do Things Differently In Finland

Including possibly suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder, because north of the Arctic Circle in Suomi, there are up to 52 days with no sun.  So!  Another entry from the 'Museum Of Failure' and one I'd never heard of before.  Ho ho.  You'll see.  Art!

     This is the 'Valkee', which is exactly what it looks like, a pair of earphones sporting LED lights.  Supposedly using the V for up to twelve minutes per day would combat SAD, migraines and jet-lag, by - er - shining lights into your ears.  There was no evidence to prove this claim and a review in Finland said the marketing was utter tosh, except in Finnish, which is 'Täysi tosh'.  The business was founded in 2007 and filed for bankruptcy in 2021, owing €1.5 million with only €100,000 in assets.  I bet they were SAD.

'Sinners'

Just seen this with the rest of the family.  It's looooong, and they could have edited 30 minutes out of the opening in my opinion, but once things start to unravel, O my, do they unravel!  Art?

     Michael B. Jordan plays both 'Smoke' and 'Stack', identical twins who have arrived in Mississippi after doing gangster work in Chicago, after having taken a lot of cash from the gangs they were working with or against.  Their plan is to create a 'juke joint', which they do, except things unravel after the sun goes down and -

     Not going to spoil anything.

One Can Only Hope

Conrad said, rubbing his hands with malicious glee.  Art!

DOGE Gone

     One fat weirdo talking to another  fat weirdo.  I haven't seen any mention anywhere recently about his supposed establishment of a political party, so I imagine that fantasy has died the death.  No self-driving taxis in time for Christmas, either.  Conrad is unsure why they have a Shiba dog in the background, as it's the icon of NAFO, the 'North Atlantic Fella Organisation'.  I would be grateful if Elong Tusk does go away forever.  No, I'm not going to watch it, the video is 13 minutes long and I still have this blog to put to bed, AND a 'Jake Broe' vlog to finish watching.  I stopped watching it to create this blog.  See how much I care?

Another Biercism For You

Because I find him funny, before you ask.  Have at it, Ambrose!

'Gunpowder, n.  An agency employed by civilised nations for the settlement of disputes which might become troublesome if left unadjusted. By most writers the invention of gunpowder is ascribed to the Chinese, but not upon very convincing evidence.  Milton says it was invented by the Devil to dispel angels with, and this opinion seems to derive some support from scarcity of angels.'

     Actually there's another three or four hundred words to this definition, so I have cut it short, just to be merciful.  Art!

Finally -

Typing this out on Christmas Day, and being sternly sober, as I am driving to Warrington tomoz morning to pick up Darling Daughter.

Caution! Not Christmassy!

The Weather, For One Thing

Your Humble Scribe is just back from walking Edna, and cannot feel the ends of his fingers thanks to windchill.  Going to be a cold one tonight.  STILL NO SNOW! a fact I grumble about, then I complain if it does arrive.  It gets tramped into ice on the pavements outside after the first day and is a slip hazard for a week, even more so if there's another snowfall.  Art!

     That's as festive and joyful as you're going to get.

     Our alternative title might be 'The Crash Cannibals' just not in the way you expect, because today in this Intro we're going to be talking about the morbid facts about Ruffian aviation of late.  Told you it wasn't going to be Yule logs and tinsel.

     Cascading aircraft disasters across Russia mark the collapse of the air fleet

     I've based this Intro about 'RFU' and their reports on recent crashes of aircraft within Mordorvia, plus what I remember from previous BOOJUM! items, and a bit of Googling.  The link to their vlog is above.  Art!

     

     They emphasise that these crashes are deep inside Ruffia, nowhere near the battlefields in Ukraine and thus cannot be explained away as hostile action - mostly.

     Firstly I would like to point out that Ruffia's passenger airliners have become increasingly dangerous to fly in, thanks to sanctions curtailing spare parts, software updates and Boeing and Airbus maintenance.  This has led to some airlines trying to get access to spares by using the 'grey market', which is very dodgy as counterfeiters have already struck.  Art!

     A Ruffian business, BLMZ, supplied low-quality ball-bearings which were then installed in Il-76 transport planes, which then had to be grounded whilst an investigation was carried out.  Art!

     A Rossiya Airlines Sukhoi S-100 lost part of an engine on takeoff and had to make an emergency diversion.  Four of this aircraft type have crashed with the loss of 89 passengers and crew.

     Perhaps as much as a third of the Ruffian passenger fleet,  some 400 aircraft, have now been 'cannibalised', which means being stripped for parts to keep the other 800 aircraft flying.

    In RFU's First Incident, they mention the recent loss of an Antonov An-22 cargo plane, which had been in service for over 50 years and was long past being safe to fly.  It was supposedly making a test flight when it broke apart in mid-air, all 7 crew being killed.  Art!

This is not what a plane should ever look like

    There are speculations that the 'repair work' was never carried out, just faked or signed off on without any checks.  The plane was still in use as Ruffia didn't have any replacements for it.

     Incident Two concerned the 'accidental' activation of an Su-34's ejection system WHILE IT WAS STILL IN THE HANGAR.  Art!

     Both crew were killed instantly when they were propelled into the concrete roof at 40 m.p.h.  Doubtless Su-34 operations are now going to be made much slower because no aircrew are going to get into an airframe that may kill them, without carrying out a very close inspection.  It's not clear if the accident was the result of incompetence, sabotage, poor maintenance or all three combined.

     Incident Three was the crashing of an Su-35 at Kubinka, when it came in to land after being scrambled to intercept a Ukrainian drone.  Details are sketchy as the orcses like to keep cagey about embarrassing losses.  Art!

For illustrative purposes only

 
     Incident Four: at  Lipetsk, an Mig-31 crashed on approach when the landing gear malfunctioned, no photos available, aircrew said to have ejected but still badly injured.  Sounds like the landing gear did not deploy.  Art!

For illustrative purposes only

     In Incident Five, an Su-30 in Karelia crashed during a training flight, killing both aircrew, implying that it was so sudden and unexpected that they had no time to eject, suggesting serious structural failure.  No pictures once again.  

     Incident Six is even more hazy.  A Ka-52 attack helicopter crashed in the Volgagrad region, killing both crew, with no Ruffian official confirmation or causation.  Ruffian milbloggers all in a pother about it.

     Incident Seven is the crash of a Ka-226 in Dagestan, which actually has a verification video.  Art!

     The pilot hits the ground, breaking the tail boom, gets back into the air, falls into the water and then takes off again before losing control and crashing, killing all aboard, who were a clutch of engineering VIPs.  It's not clear why the first ground strike occurred, possibly instrument malfunction?

     RFU - I ought to clarify this stands for 'Reporting From Ukraine' and not any other much naughtier acronyms you may guess at - clarifies the reasons for this ongoing problem, which are not only sanctions, although these have made electronic components impossibly hard to source.  There are shortages of spare parts for a 'legacy fleet' of aircraft, Soviet-era components being harvested via cannibalisation and the loss of skilled technical staff.  Unbelievably, VDV ground technicians are being sent as sunflower-fodder to Ukraine, so desperate are the Ruffians for more meat.  The key specialists who are needed to keep legacy equipment running are getting to be a rare resource.

     This is a systemic problem that is going to get incrementally worse.  Ooops.

     I could fill the rest of this blog with stuff about Ukraine and Modern-day Mordor but am not going to be that cruel.

What Were They Thinking?

Another bizarre entry from the 'Museum Of Failure', which I need to dig around to find a more representative photograph.  Art!

     This was a range of - ah - 'ketchup' that Heinz debuted in 2000.  Conrad loathes ketchup and cannot understand anyone who likes either tomato-flavoured sugar or sugar-flavoured tomato, whichever of the two it is.

     The colour range encompassed: Blastin' Green, Funky Purple, Stellar Blue, Passion Pink, Awesome Orange and Totally Teal.  Art!

In case you were wondering, as I was.

     Sales were good at first, but over time their child market grew up and by 2006 people weren't buying it any more, so it got discontinued.  A victory for taste and decency, if you ask me.

We've Seen This One Before

Lazerpig, the Youtube vlogger who is hilarious but also rather sweary, had a short item that I'm unsure is either satire, reportage or utter nonsense, about Donnie Dorko stating that South Canada is going to be building 'Trump' class battleships <needle skating over vinyl sound> which is 

     ANYWAY before we analyse that bonkerism, let me copy and paste a sly Twitter take on this.  Art!

Kein Mensch Kein Tier

@KampfmitKette

·

22h

EXCLUSIVE: The US Army has started the development of the new M1000 Trump Main Battle Tank. It will be the largest, biggest and bestest Tank in the World.

     This, of course - obviously! - is the Teuton 'Ratte', a projected 1,500 ton monster mounting the turret from a battleship and propelled by twin U-boat engines.  Purely theoretical, which doesn't stop wargamers from wanting  a 1/72 scale replica, and from satirical Tweeters.

The Ruffians Don't Like Being Reminded Of This

Fleets of battleships have only clashed twice, before the arrival of the aircraft carrier rendered them mostly redundant.  The first occasion was at the Battle Of Tsushima, which the Ruffians lost, in keeping with their appallingly bad leadership in the Russo-Japanese War.  Art!

     If you think the orcses leaders are bod now, go read up about this war and get back to me.

     The second battlefleet engagement was the Battle Of Jutland, which the Teutons liked to pretend they won, apart from the totally-hiding away in port for the next 2 years bit.  Art!

Royal Navy battleship squadron looking for a fight.

Finally -

I shall close with another  Bierceism, because we need the Word Count and because he's witty in a catty way.

'Desertion,n.  An aversion to fighting as exhibited by abandoning an army or a wife.'