As The Saying Goes
This time, there wasn't a Candair firefighting aircraft to put out the blaze.
Only in metaphor, as this Intro involves a condominium and we wouldn't want it to go the way of Easton district in Los Angeles, would we?
Once more we have a cautionary tale from Reddit, and this time the Least Valuable Player was not the Chief Villain and Villainess, but rather the narrator's singularly useless girlfriend, who appears to be one of those interesting creatures that combines the spinelessness of a jellyfish with the boot-wiping ability of a doormat. Art!
I had to use the prompt 'Spineless rug' as the AI Art Generator jibbed at 'Spineless doormat', deeming it to be unsafe. Go figure.
ANYWAY we have the location, which was a condominium with a master and secondary bedroom, a bathroom, kitchen and basement, where Forebearing Artisan - hereafter FA - and his girlfriend, whom was called 'Vicky' in the story, but whom I will call 'Sicky' for the purposes of this narration, lived alone.
FA mentioned that he worked on-campus with 'Chucky', whom I will call 'Sucky' for the purposes of this narration, as he was stupid and immature. Sucky's girlfriend, originally called 'Banshee', I shall now dub 'Yucky', was the complete opposite of Sucky, being immature and stupid. Art!
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| The trio |
Sicky waited until she and FA were headed out of state to Oregon to inform him that she'd asked Sucky and Yucky to move in to the condo to help with rent. This was the first FA had heard about it, and he wasn't best pleased. He had to put up with it as a fait accomplit. I'd say that counts as Red Flag #1.
When they got home, it was to all their stuff being moved out of the master bedroom so that Sucky and Yucky could move their larger bed in. FA bristled in readiness until Sicky told him to let it be, and he adopted her spineless posture and did so. Red Flag #2. This, however - first time use today! - was only the beginning of a gradual descent into misery, because the Gruesome Twosome only paid a third of the rent they owed, claiming that because they supplied so much furniture, they needed to pay less.
Sicky told him to let it be. Red Flag #3. Art!
They refused to let FA or Sicky sit on or use any of their furniture -
Sicky told him to let it be. Red Flag #4.
They took down all the original decorations and put up their own -
Sicky told him to let it be. Red Flag #5.
They refused to clean the bathroom or any of the dirty dishes they created.
Sicky told him to let it be. Red Flag #6.
Yucky took over half the kitchen with boxes of her toys, that she refused to store in the basement because 'they would get cold and lonely down there'. This is a grown woman, not a 5-year old, in case you were wondering. There were also clear signs of FA & Sicky's bedroom being used by Other People when they were off visiting in Oregon.
After two months of this Sicky disappeared to Europe on a study tour for two months, which is when FA activated Pro-Revenge Mode. Art!
He invited his three jock friends Rich, John and Dan to crash at his place. Literally 'crash' as they played different sporting events in the rather small condo, including football (the South Canadian version as above), basketball, fencing and laser tag. This enraged Yucky, who would storm out of the master bedroom and yell at them, to which they would cup their ears and feign deafness thanks to the volume of their sporting activity. FA also described them as 'shucking coconuts', which I am hesitant to look up, as it's possibly an incredibly seedy and squalid nickname for - ah.
Another noisy activity! In addition, they threatened to take down all the Unfair Pair's decorations and use their decorations unless the balance of the rent was coughed up. They hid all the dirty dishes and bath/shower scum in the Poo Two's bedroom, unboxed all Yucky's toys and ran amok with the toy lawnmower across the condo's corridors. Art!
Another noisy activity!
After four weeks of this the Gruesome Twosome angrily stated that they were moving out, which was greeted with general hilarity. Come moving day, FA and his trio of buds, plus a couple of cheerleader friends, were parked on the lawn outside the building, with beach umbrellas, drinks, food, towels and party music. Every trip Double Trouble made to their car - and there were a lot - was greeted with cheers, waves and cheerleading rah-rahs, which of course sent both Chief Villain and Villainess into paroxysms of rage. Peak performance was when they were struggling with a huge couch, that nobody else had been allowed to use, to a chorus of mocking advice and laughter. Yucky unwisely took the bait and stomped over to yell 'Are you going to sit and make fun or help us?'
Cue short mock discussion with the resolution 'Sit and make fun!'
That was the last FA ever saw of either, as he moved to a different campus after that semester.
A sublime case of, as I said, fighting one conflagration with an even bigger, better one. One hopes FA wised up and ditched Sicky, too - "She came back from Europe and he had Oregon".
Ooops Again
<sigh> Your Humble Scribe would like to think that the blog is incredibly popular all of a sudden, yet his innate cynicism and realism makes him doubt that Blogger's traffic algorithm is doing anything but going potty - AGAIN. Art!
Those figures are as of 08:17 on a Thursday morning, which is reason enough to look askance at them. The weekend is a far better bet for higher traffic, given the dual posts each day - but come on - Thursday?
If This Is Victory -
We have recently mentioned the nuclear-powered icebreakers that Ruffia uses to create and keep ice-free lanes in the Baltic and Arctic, and today I'd like to focus on one in particular: '50 Let Pobyedy' which is Ruffian for '50 Years Of Victory'. Art!
The curious name comes from the supposed date it was laid down: 50 years after the collapse of the Third Reich (i.e. 1995), which the Ruffians like to pretend they caused all on their own. In fact the collapse of the Sinister Union intervened and the ship lay uncompleted for 10 years, so it should be '60 Let Pobyedy' but I suppose they had all the letterheads printed already.
ANYWAY here it is, approaching a Ruffian freight vessel encountering heavy pack ice. Art!
Sal, of 'What's Going On With Shipping', was quite fulsome in his praise of Ruffian icebreaker crews, whom he described as the best marine crews that Modern-day Mordor has. The best? Art!
This is the moment both ships collide. WHICH IS NOT WHAT YOU WANT WITH A NUCLEAR-POWERED VESSEL. Just so we're clear. One imagines the bridge crew on the '50 Years' were all drunk, and the freighter's crew were all asleep or hungover. Art!
Unlike the 'Koala', the ship that sank in the harbour at Ust-Luga, there are plenty of photographs of this accident, so much so that the Ruffians positively leapt to assert that there was no problem with the nuclear power plant and it was merely cosmetic damage, a bit of Blu-tak and gaffer tape and it'd be right as monsoon in no time. In the immortal words of Doctor Johnson, yeah right.
More Movie Mopery
Back to that list by Jeremy Jahns, which has now progressed to Number Six. Ol' Jezza did say he realised a lot of the entries on his list would be horror films, and he's been right so far. Art!
This is a remake I never knew existed - and for a reason. According to Jezza, it's long, slow, boring and omits all the cool things from the book. It apparently sat around unreleased for a couple of years - never a good sign - until it was quietly released to no sound of drums or thunder on 'Max', whatever that is. Jezza unequivocally states that the Tobe Hooper version from 1979 - which I most definitely have seen - is far, far better. And scarier. Which is, in essence, what a horror film must be. At least you know what to avoid now, and one imagines Stephen King's retirement account is s bit healthier.
An Interesting Aside
This will resonate with anyone who ever read John Le Carre and whom has an interest in the espionage trade. Art!
It was the other way round, thank you incompetent ES editor. This chap was the head of Ukraine's 'Anti-Terror' organisation, except he was working for the Ruffians. When he gets sentenced one imagines he'll go into permanent solitary confinement, otherwise he'd get beaten and/or stabbed on a daily basis. The normal heirarchy in prisons is that child sex offenders are the lowest of the low, because traitors are a rare breed.
ANYWAY once the Ukrainians had discovered him, they subsequently fed back false information to the orcs before they arrested him.
The FSB now has the onerous task of trying to discover exactly when they were fed garbage instead of intelligence, meaning they have to now suspect that everything they ever got out of matey was utter moonshine.
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