This Carbon Based Life

By David Glenn Cox

Rumor has it that Russia is running out of interceptor missiles. Million-dollar missiles fighting off $10,000 drones. Missiles originally designed to hit other missiles and hundred million dollar fighter jets. It’s just simple math. It’s hitting a mosquito with a sledgehammer. A gold plated sledgehammer. The Russian Pantsir missile battery holds six rockets, and when they are expended it takes around twenty to thirty minutes to reload. That just won’t do when they can send fifty or a hundred drones at a time.

There comes a time in every prolonged conflict when one party is tactically defeated, but not yet militarily defeated. There’s no gas left in Crimea. Gas lines are miles long in Moscow. The going price for fuel yesterday was around $22,00 per gallon (Eight gallon limit) Black market prices are considerably higher. Grocery shelves in Crimea are emptying. Grocery stores in Moscow will soon follow suit. Russia withdrew a radar set from Crimea and installed it at the oil refinery near Moscow. The same oil refinery that the Ukrainians bombed last week. The one providing 50% of Moscow’s gasoline.

Better late than never! I always say. The Russian leadership had a choice. Leave the radar set in Crimea or bring it to Moscow. Moscow isn’t defending Crimea anymore; Moscow is defending Moscow. The Kerch Bridge is open, and maybe it’s time to leave. But that leaves Moscow with a terrible and untenable choice. If Moscow abandons Crimea, it opens a second front in the Russian rear. (What a weird sentence.) No food, no water, no electricity.

The Russian economy is kaput. There have been bank runs. There have been strikes and threats from marauding soldiers to march on Moscow. The elites were shaken, but fortunately for Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, not stirred. Putin began selling off Russian gold reserves to finance the war. But what if he sold the gold to the Russian oligarchs? Sure! Why not? The oligarchs get to exchange their old, ratty, rapidly deflating paper rubles for nice hard gold! Gold never goes down in value the way that paper rubles do sometimes. Insulating the elite from the effects of the war. But if you own that oil refinery, that’s not the point.

How do you spell desperation? Russia recently made it legal for private companies to operate their own anti-aircraft artillery. A tacit admission of don’t call the cops, buy a gun! You’re on your own, comrade! Just jump into your sporty Trabant and head on down to your local Defense Mall home of “Missiles Are Us!” A veritable super-store of defense hardware. Pick out something nice for your refinery. Do you currently employ trained operators, comrade? You see, volume one of the operator’s manual is over 4,000 pages.

All the surgeons are busy right now. Buy a book and do it yourself! Page one. Congratulations on your purchase of a Hematoma R/9Q 19784 radar set. Step one: you will need the following tools. Follow the inventory sheet to make sure all the parts are present. Step 47. Using a winch or small crane (not provided) lift the antenna assembly carefully into place as shown in illustration 118. Note: If parts are missing, call the number on the box and clearly state your model number.

“Hello, and thank you for calling the Hematoma Corporation. Where we make killing fun! Your call is very important to us. Press one to hear this message in English. Press two for the aircraft division. Press three for combat operations. Press four for billing and accounts. Press five for HR and employment opportunities. Press six for the break room. Press seven to hear this message again.”

The point being that you can’t just set up a radar unit or a missile battery like a camping tent from Walmart. Those boys will be shooting at the sparrows with million dollar missiles! It assumes the war will last at least another year, long enough to half-way train them. But the signs point to Nyet!

For three days, Ukrainian drones have pummeled Russian ships in the Sea of Azov. Why? The Russians had no defense and just couldn’t stop them. These radar sets Putin suggests they purchase are in short supply. It’s said the Russians are digging into their own warehouses and pulling out radar sets from the good old days, the 1960s! I’m sure that will help. Good old vacuum tubes! They’ll never let you down! There comes a time in every prolonged conflict when one party is tactically defeated, but not yet militarily defeated.

Russian farmers are canceling the harvest. The fuel is more valuable than the crop it harvests. So what will they do for income next year? What will they do for food? They say the streets are quiet now and no one drives anywhere anymore without a damn good reason. Winter comes early in Russia. What will they do then? No heat, no fuel, and no food, but the radars are working again, sir!

I wanted to mention the Trump Deflecting pool. It’s dry now and filled with invisible Trump water. There is no 300-foot or 300 yard or 300-mile long gash caused by terrorists in the deflecting pool. There is also no American flag blue left in the deflecting pool, just a sorta baby diarrhea brown. The Flex-Seal on the bottom of the pool is drying out in the sun now and will soon get crusty and brittle. (like our leader) No news is good news here in North Korea. Plans? What do you want to know about our plans for? Our leader is going to make it better of course through strength, this time!

A full-blown shooting war in Iran and barely a mention in the news. We don’t talk about Trump’s mistakes around here. And even if we did, we’d twist that story up like a pretzel. I don’t know about ya’ll but I get worried when we don’t see Trump in public every few days. “He’s visiting Mitch McConnell! He’ll be back next week.”

“When you surround an army, leave an outlet free. Do not press a desperate foe too hard.” ― Sun Tzu