From The Zenith To The Nadir

That's Me Being All Philosophical 

You see, we're going from the very highest creative concepts in literature - some of which are so high they are beyond my ken - to the basest behaviours of Hom. Sap. although no, we're not talking Office Lunch Thieves <hack spit>.  Art!

Close enough

     This is a tale of the seedy, the greedy and the weedy, as it concerns a large landscaping business in South Canada, which had grown from humble beginnings to a large organisation employing many full-time crews, doing residential and commercial work and with a side-gig of snow removal in winter.  It had taken the Acerbic Landscaping BUsiness Manager (and her hubbo), hereafter ALBUM, 15 years to get this entity into the lucrative company it was.

     Enter Dubious Integrity Salaried Knowall, hereafter DISK, who was employed as the book-keeper and accountant at this firm, whom ALBUM cordially detested, considering office workers to be one step lower than slugs on the ladder of life.   She had a severe case of Swollen Head Syndrome Art!

     DISK performed payroll, accounts receivable and payable, taxes, insurance claims and suppliers, for a business with sixty employees, which meant that she knew where the commercial bodies were buried.  Bear in mind that DISK had been working there for 6 years by the time she narrated this story, and had done NOTHING to curb any of the frankly illegal work practices of ALBUM.  Which is why she's down as 'Dubious Integrity'.

    Some examples of what she observed: employees being paid cash instead of direct deposit; classifying other employees as 'contractors' so she didn't have to pay taxes or Medicare; skimming cash payments for customer; fraudulently listing family assets as company ones; claiming vacations were business outings.  Art!

     That isn't a swimming pool - it's a 'client entertainment facility'.

     Aware that being involved in all this illegal activity, DISK kept meticulous records on everything, stored at home to be secure.  After six years she'd had enough of the rank dishonesty and got employment elsewhere with an accounting firm paying a lot better and minus shenanigans.  Art!

     Hopefully this gives you a flavour of how horrid and unscrupulous ALBUM was.  The crunch came when DISK handed in her two-week notice, because ALBUM, as petty and spiteful as she was, refused to pay for the three weeks leave DISK was owed, a sum of $4,000.  Stick a pin in that total, as it comes back to haunt ALBUM.  She poo-pooed DISK when she warned that this was illegal, having, as I have said, a severe case of I Can Do No Wrong Syndrome.

     DISK, upon leaving, instantly went to the State Labour Board, an organisation that takes 'wage theft' very seriously indeed, whom found in her favour and ordered ALBUM to pay her $6,000, which wound the latter up into a frothing rage.  She spread lies over social media and tried to get DISK fired from her new employer.  Art!

     

     I did mention about knowing where the bodies were buried?

     Surprise!  DISK went over her records and calculated ALBUM had avoided paying at least $1,000,000 in taxes and that was only over the six years she'd been working there.  She contacted a tax attorney and between the two of them they set about comprehensively organising and arranging all the evidence: bank statements, cash receipts, payroll records, tax filings and vendor invoices.  There was so much it took a month.

     THEN she filed a complaint with the Department Of Labour about wage theft, and then another with the Internal Revenue Service about the tax avoidance.  The IRS, in case you don't know, has the attention and focus of a bulldog armed with tungsten-carbide tipped teeth when it comes to tax avoiders.  All this over $4,000.  Who'd have thought.  Art!

     Meanwhile, the state labour board had carried out an audit, so ALBUM had to reclassify half her employees and pay their back taxes, and penalties.  The Department Of Labour was also prowling about wage theft allegations.

     Then the IRS paid a visit and walked out with a shedload of documents and her computers.  Erk!  This resulted in the company's accounts being frozen.

     THEN the state labour board hit ALBUM with back taxes and fines that came to $300,000.  O how reasonable $4,000 seems now!

     THEN the IRS chimed in.  ALBUM owed over $1.2 million in taxes, which, boosted by fines and interest - yes, they backtracked to six years prior - came to $2 million.  Or, if you like, 500 times the original $4,000.  O how reasonable that seems now!

     The state then went after her business and personal assets to seize in order to make the payments.  ALBUM had to sell the whole business at a loss of 70%.  This still wasn't sufficient so the state made her sell both her home and vacation home to make up the reimbursement.  Art!

ALBUM's final destination?

     No mention of ALBUM's situation at the end, but given that she was jobless, homeless, carless and penniless it can't have been fun.  All thanks to refusing $4,000.  What a nadir.

     The killing joke was that DISK got a substantial monetary reward from the IRS' whistleblower program.

Time For More Gentle Shoeing!

Once again we are indebted to that Romanian son of NAFO, 'Daractenus' and his hilariously satirical take on upmarket Ruffian towns and cities.  Art!

     This is 'Nikel', a city based around - you may be ahead of me here - nickel.  Because Barad-Duh thinks only woke Westerners suffer from pollution-related illnesses, it is an incredibly unhealthy place to live or work.  Art!

     That's the city's nickel smelter, which explains the barren ground in the top photo, as it's fumes kill off all plant life, and which irks the nearby Norwegians, as it's close to the border.  Reputedly, the fumes occasionally blew back into the city and were toxic enough to burn holes in umbrellas.  I expect the locals hack and cough like 80-per day smokers.  What a pearl!

An Update On 'Melania'

The terrible vanity-project undertaken to flatter the Saggy Senile Sepia Sackbut, as the lady in question - perhaps I should say 'woman' in question - is his wife. The box office is not looking any too healthy.  Art!

     Some of the MAGA crowd have been braying about how cinemas were packed out and it was standing room only, without providing anything like, you know, photos or evidence.  On the evidence of the above, they are living in la-la land, just like DJ Tango.


Rather Than Tanks

I'm putting up another Terence Cuneo artwork, this one of heavy industrial excavation plant.  Art!

    This one has the title "Walking dragline excavator on an opencast coal site Whitley Bay"  and is dated 1950.  Note how Ol' Tel works in a specimen of Hom. Sap. to show the sheer scale of this behemoth.  Conrad is a bit unsure quite what a 'walking dragline' is and will enquire.  Art!

     Yes, they are able to 'walk' thanks to two enormous 'feet' placed on each side of their chassis, at about the same speed as a snail.  The huge bucket you see in Ol' Tel's painting is capable of holding up to 220 tons of burden.  The whole thing is so enormous it's constructed on site, as there's no way you could transport one of them along roads or railways.  When the strip mine is exhausted one presumes they are broken down and moved to the next one.

"This Book Is Full Of Spiders" By David Wong

Following in the footsteps of 'John Dies At The End', this is another bonkers entertaining novel featuring David, John and Amy.  Also Molly the Irish setter.  It is a mix of ghastly horror and fizzing comedy, neither of which I'm going to refer to today.  Art!

      Meet the Gladiator Unmanned Ground Vehicle, as used by the South Canadian Marines, and which is mentioned in the text, where it serves to keep the quarantined in the quarantine zone.  David also mentions hi-spec UAVs, circling the Q zone, armed with precision machine guns, night vision and Hellfire missiles, which is quite prescient given that the novel was written in 2012.

Finally -

Going out on a pithy Biercism.

"Rude,adj: Reminding a lady of the good times you had forty years ago."

How J G Ballard Invented 'Waterworld'

If You Want To Define 'Production Hell'

'Waterworld' is your go-to film.  Kevin Costner learned a very expensive lesson in why shooting films at sea is always tricky, not to mention costly, and that you cannot control the elements.  The original set sank, having to be replaced at considerable cost, there were delays imposed by re-writes of the script, , the production cost ballooned to $175 million and the world press jumped on it before filming finished as 'washed up'.  Art!

     It made $132 million at the box office, but before you jeer or cheer, it did make an eventual profit when released on video and then on television.  

     What does an Hollywood blockbuster have to do with Ballard, one of the most depressing authors in sci-fi?  O, I thought you'd never ask!  

     In case you missed it, we are now back into the final Intro dealing with '68 Philosophical Sci-Fi Books That Will Melt Your Mind' from the Youtube channel 'Sci-Fi Odyssey'.  Art!

     At No. 8, meet The Drowned World, By J G Ballard, arch-miserablist (1962).  The title says it all: protracted and violent solar storms have affected the Earth's ionosphere, allowing far more solar radiation to reach the Earth's surface, resulting in the sea levels rising enormously.  Some 70 years after this catastrophe, a scientific expedition from the North Pole - now temperate and livable - attempts to catalogue the flora and fauna that inhabit a vast lagoon covering London.  They find a landscape turned tropical, with giant alligators and iguanas holding sway.

     If this sounds exciting, sit back down.  Ballard is more interested in the psychological breakdown suffered by expedition members than anything that might raise your pulse.  Despite being recognised as the primary work in climate change sci-fi, it's never been filmed or televised, because who would want to watch 90 minutes of people having a mental breakdown and psychological regression?

No. 7: Midshipman's Hope by David Feintuch (1994).  Another Nope.  Let me dig.  Ah, a member of that subset known as 'military science fiction'.  In this case, the ascension to command of a starship by the 17-year old Midshipman Nicholas Seafort, after a series of unfortunate events - hmmm that sounds familiar - kill all the other officers.  Art!

     FYI, a Midshipman was the lowest form of officer on a Royal Navy warship, worth considerably less than the experienced petty officers, since he was there to - you may be ahead of me here - gain experience.

     Sounds like the complete counterpoint to Ballard.

No. 6: The Hidden Girl by Ken Liu (2020).  Yet another Nope.  Urgh, the blurb claims that it's a work of 'speculative fiction', which always makes Conrad shudder in distaste.  If it's sci-fi, CALL IT sci-fi and don't be so Dog Buns pretentious.  A collection of short stories.  Art!

     I can see her pretty plainly, but perhaps that's just the new varifocals.

     ANYWAY because it's a short story collection, any descriptive blurb is terse and economical with the words.  It seems to be highly contemporary, dealing with issues such as cryptocurrency and AI, the first of which is a scamble and the latter possibly Hom. Sap. creating it's own demise.

No. 5: Axiomatic By Greg Egan (1995).  Him again! and another Nope.  Let me go trawl teh Interwebz.  Oho and aha, another short story collection, stuff he wrote in the late Eighties and early Nineties.  Art!

     Mr. Egan is known for his 'hard sci-fi' narratives, meaning that what he writes is scientifically plausible, coherent and consistent.  No light sabres or anti-gravity, sorry.  The blurb does mention brain implants and dolphins speaking in limericks.  Flipper heck.  I shall nick a bit of the expository on teh Interwebz:

Explores the nature of reality, identity, free will, and the impact of technology on humanity. 

     Nothing too heavy then.

No. 4 - 1:  Downbelow Station; Merchanter's Luck; Cyteen; Regenesis By C J Cherryh  (1981, 1982, 1988, 2009)

Yes, I'm cheating here by doing 4 at once.  Sue me, see if I care.  The only one of this quartet I've read is DS, probably 40 years ago.  Her actual surname - gasp! another female sci-fi author! - is 'Cherry' but she added the extra 'H' because her editor said her real name sounded like a woman who wrote Mills & Boon books.

     ANYWAY IIRC DS is another military sci-fi subgenre entry.  Art!

     The novel is set in a future where Earth and it's rebellious colonies are waging war on each other, and the station of the title is a strategically important space station orbiting the planet Pell's World in the Tau Ceti star system.  I seem to recall the narrative point of view jumping around a lot and <ahem> skipped the more boring chapters.

     AND with that I am done.  You can look those 3 others up, I've gotten the Word Count up to 800 and we can now move on to other topics for Intros.  You're welcome.

I Hope You Have A Strong Stomach

Conrad does.  I still remember Francine saying I ought to leave my body to science, as only then would the world discover my secret for not dying from food poisoning.  

      ANYWAY AGAIN, as you may remember I have been Bookmarking a few of the truly hideous photos of Donold Judas Trump on Twitter, and recently came across one that is new to me, which I will share with you.  Art!

     He looks as if he's chewing a lemon filled with broken glass and urine.  Also, who is that character from 'Preacher' he reminds me of?

     Ah yes that's the one Bottomholeface.  Who is actually a sweetie on the inside, which is not what you can say about King Piggy.

     Never mind 5 years of social media posts, a single week of BOOJUM! would get me permanently barred from South Canada.

How Very Apt!

Yesteryon we published a picture by Terence Cuneo, of a De Havilland Vampire jet fighter undergoing maintenance.  Today we have another of Tel's paintings, titled 'Construction Of The Manchester Metrolink', done in 1991.  Art!

     I think Tel has taken a bit of poetic licence here, as it's dry, bright and sunny, three words that tend not to apply to Gomorrah On The Irwell.   From the background detail, I think this is the Great Bridgewater Street Bridge.  Art!

Complete and from the opposite side

More Gentle Shoeing

Maybe not so gentle.  Sarah Paine, eminent academic and historian, was having a chat with Pyotr Kurzin on Youtube and gleefully wondered at what chance there was of Bunker Gargoyle Midget dying of a heart attack or stroke, due to the immense pressure he's under.  A non-zero chance, I assert.  If you catch him minus the makeup and special lighting, he looks haggard and ten years older than he really is.

     ANYWAY ANYWAY Art!

     "Pressurize Moscow", to round it off.  $22 per barrel is about half of what it costs to actually extract Urals crude.  Wowsers, this is bad for Mordorvia.  Their state budget for 2026 relied on oil selling for $59 dollars per barrel and now they're getting almost a third of that.  Someone in Moscow is going to be jumping from a window, or sipping on a tasty cup of polonium tea, even though everything is going according to plan.

     In a further note, I saw a news item saying three major Ruffian construction companies had gone bankrupt, and I wondered if there'd been a typo in the headline.  Art!

     Do they mean £900 million, perhaps?

     Nope.

SC Donstroy in the city of Rostov-on-Don collapsed into bankruptcy after accumulating a debt of 11 million rubles (£105,000).

     

    This is bonkers!  £105,000 is peanuts for a major business organisation, yet it goes toes-up without being able to refinance or negotiate credit or work out a payment plan or sell off some assets?  Things are indeed bad in Mordorvia.

     Which is great for me, it creates lots of content!

Finally -

More from my "QI Book Of Banter", which I like to sprinkle amongst the Biercisms.  

"Laws are like sausages.  It is better not to know how they are made." - Otto Von Bismark.  Ha!  Who would have thought that the Teuton's Iron Chancellor had such a sense of humour.

A Modern Eon

First Of All

We need to define 'eon', which is the hideous South Canadian variant spelling of 'aeon', although I seem to recall that H. P. Lovecraft was fond of using the proper spelling when talking about the El  

     ANYWAY my Collins Concise defines it as a measure of geological time, consisting of two or more eras, or, more definitively, one thousand million years.  Call it a billion.  A very long time by any measurement.  Art!

     Ah yes, Modern Eon, a New Wave band from Liverpool.  I recall that they wanted Enrico Morricone to do production on their sole LP, except he's not into doing production for bands.

     ANYWAY ANYWAY we are now into the umpteenth Intro covering the '68 Philosophical Sci-Fi Books That Will Melt Your Mind' which is metaphorical, not literal, fortunately for Conrad.

No. 13: Eon by Greg Bear (1985).  I read this not long after it was published, which is a good 40 years ago.  What do I remember of it?  It concerns a vast terraformed asteroid of the future that mysteriously appears in Earth's orbit, prompting an exploration of same.  IIRC it also involved parallel realities, and a Sinister assault to claim for themselves, the greedy ruffians.  Art!

     One thing that stuck with me was the 'Apple', being a construction of the acronym 'APL', which itself stands for 'Anti-Personnel Laser'.  The most dangerous fruit since Eve took a bite.  Given all that, I cannot remember how it ends, so I might have to go back and read it again, and report back to you, gentle reader.  I bet you can hardly wait.

No. 12: Haze by L E Modesitt (2009).  Another Nope.  That surname sounds familiar, mind.  Let me go digging a little.  Hmmmm.  Okay, so the title 'Haze' refers to a planet shrouded by nano-satellites that keep it hidden from the eyes and ears of the Federation.  Not the cosy, cuddly Federation from 'Starry Trex' (sp?) but a totalitarian one where China holds sway.  Naturally, the Fed wants to know all about Haze.  Art!

     So they send in a spy, whom has an unfortunate backstory that intrudes into his mission.  Well of course he does, because dramatic effect.  Nope, still a Nope.

No. 11:  The Postman by David Brin (1985).  Another Yes!  Again, Conrad read this one close to the release date.  It concerns a post-apocalyptic South Canada, wherein the lead protagonist, one  Gordon Krantz, finds an abandoned US Postal Service vehicle with mail and a spare uniform, as he drifts across Oregon.  He dons the uniform and begins to spin a myth about a reconstituted South Canadian Government, attempting to deliver the mail.  I recall that part of the problem of resurrecting a government was the presence of several militias and warlords, which are overthrown by the novel's end.  Art!

     I've also seen the film version, which <shudders with horror> was 29 years ago, and all I can remember is that Tom Petty had a cameo role.  Time to rewatch?

No. 10: The Shockwave Rider by John Brunner (1975).  Nope.  I shall enquire upon.  Hmmmm interesting!  Look at the publication date.  The novel concerns a protagonist staying out of government clutches by hacking computer systems to create false identities.  It is highly prescient in anticipating the Information Age, as well as government overview and intrusion into individual lives, and it coined the term 'worm' for a type of computer virus.  Art!

No. 9: Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank (1959).  Another Yes!  I believe I read this a couple of years ago as a PDF on teh Interwebz.  Warning!  This is not a happy jolly fun work in any way.  It portrays the apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic town of Fort Repose in Florida, as World War Three breaks out and ends.  With the end of civilisation as we know it, the town has to come together to combat hunger, illness and sheer unbridled criminality.  Art!

     It's an outstanding novel, very influential and still chillingly relevant today.  At the time, global nuclear arsenals were nowhere near the totals they have reached today, which ought to give you food for thought. The title is derived from the Book Of Revelations, in case you were wondering and even if you weren't.

     We will leave it there for today, and should be able to finish this list by tomorrow.  I bet you can hardly wait.

Conrad Is Angry! (Again)

I shall be exercising the Remote Nuclear Tormentor shortly, as I am about to drive up my blood pressure by detailing the hideously inapt Codeword solutions I have had to solve.  Art!

RNT

HYAENAS: Come on now!  How many words do you know that have the triplet 'YAE' in them? NONE! None I tell you, yet here we are.  It's not as if Hyaenas are common domestic pets here in the Allotment Of Eden and the association would ever occur to people.  Bah and Art!

JOULE: NO! This is not a typo of 'JEWEL'.  Sit down, because this is defined by my CCED as 'The derived SI unit of work or energy; the work done when the point of application of a force of 1 newton is displaced through a distance of 1 metre in the direction of the force'.  There you are and I'm so glad we got that straightened out.  Conrad is familiar with this term thanks to that Physics class I took but the rest of you must be scratching your heads.  Art!

Named after the splendidly befurred James Joule

PLEXUS: I seem to recall the definition of this term, which is 'an intricate network or arrangement' so it may have cropped up already in the recent past.  HOWEVER I am still angry and will sit and simmer in my righteous wrath.  There was something about a 'solar plexus', an anatomical term I have never bothered to define.  Wait one.

There you go

     And that's all the Codeword conniptions my blood pressure can stand.

Ah Now It Becomes Clear

'Bricktop', one of the chaps I follow on Twitter, posted a short amusing video of a couple assembling a DIY bed from the bare boards up.  Art!

     Very worthy.  It's done in timelapse so what took ages is completed in seconds.  You may be wondering about the general architecture and all those arches.  Art!

     Two happy woofers and a new definition of a dog-bed.

More Gentle Shoeing

For once, I am not taking aim at the Saggy Senile Sepia Sackbut, rather at his wife, Melania.  The one often accused of being a former sex worker, although I don't know how truthful that is.

     So, a 'documentary' film about her called - you may be ahead of me here - 'Melania' has recently been released, and all the bootlicking sycophants have been bigging it up.  Other critics have panned it.  Art!

    As any fule noes, the studio only gets 50% of the box office back, so it's made $3.5 million, on a budget of at least $40 million (some say $75 million) and as any fule also noes, films make their biggest profit on their release date and the box office gradually declines over time.  

     Of course - obviously! - Donold Judas Trump will be braying about how successful it is, because he has to take his socks and shoes off to count beyond ten.

If I Were To Say "Servicing The Vampire"

Firstly, WASH OUT YOUR FILTHY MINDS!  It should be in taupe, as in "Servicing The Vampire" as I am referring to another of Terence Cuneo's artworks.  Art!

     Yes, here we see the unglamourous yet vital work of routine maintenance, a De Haviland Vampire jet getting the tender loving care in this illustration.   The Vampire was a twin-boom single-engined fighter, the second jet in British service, and they made scads of them, over 3,000.  Art!

     A production run that makes those of today look weak and feeble.

Finally -

Leaving with a quote from my "QI" book of banter.

"Few men have the virtue to resist the highest bidder" - George Washington, South Canadian politician and Prez.  That whining noise is him turning in his grave at 5,000 r.p.m.

Frothing For February

Greetings, Humans!

I mean 'Greetings, Fellow Humans!' of course - obviously!  Because I really cannot afford to have UNIT, SHADO and Spectrum after me all at the same time.  

     ANYWAY to change subjects as quickly as possible, it's time to put out this week's sternward-staring Sunday.  Let's snatch that fuel rod from Art's scrofulous hands and prod him into semi-sentience.

     Hmmmm,  not bad this time.  Thank you.

     Let's get on with the links.

2025

BOOJUM!: Penguin Post

2024

BOOJUM!: Insert Eggy Pun Here

2023

BOOJUM!: Manners Maketh The Man

2022

BOOJUM!: I Took A While But I Got There

2021

BOOJUM!: A Long Shot

2020

BOOJUM!: Light Metal

2019

BOOJUM!: Of Fire And Ice

2018

BOOJUM!: We Pecan Work It Out

2017

BOOJUM!: More Of Robots, Honest

2016

BOOJUM!: My Bloody Feet ...

2015

BOOJUM!: Lemon Barley Water!

2014

BOOJUM!: Feb The First Is, Simply, The Worst

How Arthur C. Clarke Invented Beverley Hills

Well, Kind Of

In the sense of not at all, actually.  What am I chuntering on about?  You'll see.  First of all, let me prod Art awake from his lignite-induced stupor -

     Conrad is not remotely interested in these self-congratulatory onanistic events, doesn't know who was nominated nor who won.  I care so little that I'm not going to bother clarifying those title.  Gee, aren't I a stinker!

     ANYWAY the 2026 Golden Globes were held in Beverley Hills, the rather upmarket part of Los Angeles.  So there was a concatenation of stars in the city of L.A. which leads us right back to the next instalment of '68 Philosophical Sci-Fi Films To Melt Your Brain' from the Youtube channel 'Sci-Fi Odyssey'.

No. 18: The City And The Stars by Arthur C. Clarke (1956)  Conrad is pretty sure I had this as a paperback a few years back, started it and then it got binned during Project Apocalypse*, thus never finished.  Let me check the plot.  Hmmm it kind of rings a faint, distant bell.   Art!

     'The' city because the one in question, Diaspar, is the only one left on Earth a billion years into the future, protected by it's dome, run by computers and where people have acquired immortality.  However, they stagnate.  This leads to a curious citizen, Alvin, deciding to dig into the city and humanity's past.  It's called a classic of the Golden Age of science fiction thanks to the publication date, and Ol' Art would have to try really, really hard to write a bad novel.

No. 17: The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein (1966).  Another Yes! and this is definitely a classic.  You might characterise it as the <spit hack> South Canadian Revolutionary War in space.  Art!

     The plot is centred around the war that breaks out when the Moon's dwellers, the descendants of penal colonists who call themselves 'Loonies', try to break free from the tyranny and oppression of the Earthbound 'Authority'.  Their rebellious efforts are enhanced and supported by the sentient Authority supercomputer, Mike, and by the fact that they have mass-drivers - about which I shall say no more.  It discusses matters such as political freedom, libertarianism, and - as with Heinlein's trademark and matter-of-fact discussion of sex - polyandry.  

     How this has never been filmed is a minor mystery to me.  When I take over Hollywood will be ordered to make it, end of story.

No. 16: Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (1957).  Another Nope, and from what I've read about Rand, that Nope is going to stand.  I remember listening to an episode of 'The Flop House' where they utterly destroyed a film adaptation, and that Rand seemed to have a particular obsession with trains and railways.  Art!

     TLDR: civilisation collapses as the rich and powerful go 'on strike'.  If only Peter Thiel and Elong Tusk would do so!

No. 15:  A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick (1977).  Yes!  Not only have I read the book, I've seen the bleakly hilarious film, done in Rotoscope.  The background to the novel is a horribly addictive drug called 'Substance D', which causes the two halves of the brain to function independently.  Narcotics police place agent Bob Arctor into a house full of drug users, including Donna the drug dealer, hoping to get an in on where the drug originates.  Art!

     Acting in character entirely too much, Bob becomes addicted to 'D', begins to break down mentally and is sent to rehab by his superiors.  This involves basic grunt work on a farm - and a twist in the tale that I won't telegraph.  Art!

     What the most disturbing thing about ASD is how autobiographical it is.  PKD stated that he saw everything that happens in the novel.  Also, conspiranoid loonwaffle Alex Jones has a very brief cameo.  Art!

     Then he gets Tazered and thrown into the back of a black van.

No. 14: Schild's Ladder by Greg Egan (2002).  We end on another Nope.  Let me check teh Interwebz for more info.  Wait one.  Hmmmm.  This one sounds deep and complicated, with a lot of higher mathematics and examination of quantum states.  Okay, so 20,000 years into the future, a mathematical modelling experiment Goes Horribly Wrong in the vicinity of the star Mimosa.  The result is a vacuum more stable than normal vacuum, which begins to expand at half the speed of light.  Art!

     Humanity splits into two groups: The Preservationists, who want their Milky Way galaxy back, and the Yielders, who want to study this new reality.

     No word on how it ends.  Sorry about that.  But, you know, There Are Things Man Was Not Meant To Know, or, to update that old saw, There Are Things People Were Not Meant To Know. 

I DO NOT WANT AN OSCILLOSCOPE!!

And I am emphasising this expression with TWO exclamation marks as that's how serious I am.  Art!

     How very splendid.  Your Humble Scribe is certain that fans of oscilloscopes would love this piece of kit BUT NOT ME!

     Really.  Some entities.

Made Up Of Awwwww!

Conrad seems to have managed to get the Youtube algorithm to focus it's short films on possums.  Not complaining, I think they're cute.  Here's one posing for the camera.  Art!

     People in the Comments who had possums as pets say they are friendly and affectionate and easy to housetrain.  It's also highly amusing seeing them eat new food for the first time, as they appreciate both the taste and the novelty.

Hubris Hits Home

I came across a short tale of Unintended Consequences on Youtube that encapsulates Malicious Compliance and the unusual case of a manager admitting a mistake.  Art!

     The narrator, a PUrchasing MAnager, hereafter PUMA, had been using a local firm that made the type of baubles you see above, and had done so for 5 years with no problems.  The firm charged a markup that included them dealing with customs, shipping and QC.

     Enter new Director Of OPerations, hereafter DOOP.  He was convinced of his own business genius and that PUMA was squandering money on a local firm, so they were going to cut out this middleman, go directly to the source, in The Populous Dictatorship and save 15%.

     PUMA explained this would be a very bad idea, which DOOP immediately dismissed, saying he was just lazy.  Art!

"Expediting a very bad decision"

     PUMA handed DOOP a list of Chinese bauble suppliers and he went to work.  He had nous enough to realise that the Free On Board price didn't include the cost of shipping to South Canada (it covers everything up to goods being loaded onto a freighter) and so wired money to a supplier.  However, he didn't hire a customs broker, so when the baubles arrived in a 40-foot shipping container, they were impounded by Customs & Border Patrol.  Ooops.  Art!

     He hadn't registered an Importer Security Filing, which needs to go to CBP at least 24 hours before imports arrive.  Thus the container sat unclaimed for 10 days.  Ooops again.  It didn't sit there for free, CBP charge 'demurrage fees' for items not claimed or recovered, which fees already wiped out the 15% saving he was seeking.

     The next day DOOP ate humble pie and asked PUMA for the phone number of the local supplier.

     

Blimey!  Just heard the chimes of an ice-cream van, first of the year.  You're being optimistic, matey.

Finally -

From my "QI Book Of Banter".

'I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which when you looked at it in the right way, did not become still more complicated.'  Poul Anderson, South Canadian sci-fi author.  He's not on the list of 68, which is a bit of an admission as he won boatloads of awards and I've enjoyed his work.

*  The name for getting rid of several hundred of my paper children.  Awful times.