Red Sales In The Sunset

I Am Going To Have To Do Some Background Here

Which implies either an incredibly niche Intro or pop culture from the Geg community of Albania way back in 1964.

     Art!

     Honest, there was the Geg culture, versus the Tosks, and they were de

     ANYWAY  we are looking instead at another Pro-revenge story, where Your Humble Scribe is beavering away on the keyboard, with an Ambient soundtrack from Youtube in the background.  Art!

     This is me getting my own back on Darling Daughter and Quiet Tom for their Youtube vlogs of people cooking on the terrace and playing music, back in September.

     SO! we are now listening to another tale of Manglement, wherein the narrator is called Extraneous Straight-Speaking Sales Engineer, hereafter ESSSE, whom relates another saga of manglement at 'Douchebag Telechnology Company' which acronym they created all by themselves with nil BOOJUM! input  at all.  DTC.
    As is so often the problem in such cases, the was a divorce between sales and engineering.  Art!

     This is a common theme.  Sales would promise the Moon and Engineering  would have to deliver it, even if impossible.

     So!  Enter ESSSE's bete noir, 'a petty little man', and ex-collleague, 'Sales LIMiting Expeditor', hereafter SLIME, whom was not his manager but liked to pretend they were. 

     SLIME was up for any kind of behaviour that would upstage ESSSE, regardless of whether it was good for the business or not.  To which end they and a sales rep managed a sale to American Banking Corporation, hereafter ABC, with ESSSE completely out of the loop, and then boasted about it.

     Hubris, hubris, calling your co-ordinates for an airstrike right now

     

     - I just thought I'd interpose from the Youtube channel I'm listening to in the background at present, as I type this scrivel out for you, my loyal audience.  That's a great mock-up of an astronaut, don't you think?

     ANYWAY <shakes head at having spilled tea on my journal> another manager calls ESSE in a panic, since SLIME and his sales rep have sold ABC a completely inappropriate product that simply will not work.  ESSE suggests an alternative as a workaround, which won't cost any more money.

     Big no-no from SLIME, as this will be an admission of his having blotted his copybook, or messed up, and he hates having to admit it.  ESSE's boss backs up SLIME, so ESSE promptly quits and sends chapter and verse about these shenanigans to HR.  Who sit on them and do nothing.  Art!

HR hard at work

     An indeterminate time later, ESSE is talking to a friend still working at DTC, whom lets slip the news that they had managed to flub a huge deal with ABC.  ESSE posts about this on an open forum where potential investors hung out.  DTC's stock drops by 13% the next morning.

     Enter the lawyers.  At this point ABC are suing DTC, because this is South Canada, where litigation is in the blood.  ESSE contacts ABC, informing them about his experience with SLIME and the product mis-selling, and all the detailed information he passed on to HR, which their legal team is delighted to receive.  Art!

It's those South Canadian cosmonauts again

     DTC, feeling liverish after that stock price drop, take legal action against ESSE.  They subpoena him and work towards a deposition, which is a pre-trial event where ESSE would have had to give detailed information about his background and involvement, essentially everything he told ABC.

     Then DTC sue him directly, which is a key legal point and utter stupidity on their part, because now ESSE doesn't have to say anything at the deposition.  He and ABC's lawyers wonder how DTC could do anything so stupid.  Well, it comes out that they have two legal teams working for them, one fighting the good fight against ABC and another, totally separate, team suing people on the internet to try and keep criticism chilled.  Neither team communicated with each other, so team two had no idea ESSE was going to be a star witness.  Art!

'Star'.  Get it?

     Having cut their own legs out from beneath them, DTC settles with ABC and drops their suit against ESSE.  They then fire SLIME, his sales rep and his manager, too, for good measure.

     All of which could have been avoided if they'd only accepted ESSE's workaround in the first place.  There is no clue as to the real business names involved, so I cannot check and see what sums of money were involved, but since ABC had been dealing with DTC for over a year, we are probably talking millions, especially considering the amount of legal expenses.  I bet their lawyers walked away happy, though!

Many A True Word Spoken In Jest

Conrad has been enjoying the current schism between the different factions of MAGA, caused by Donnie Dorko going stark raving mad and waging war on Iran.  This was such an act of utter insanity, so poorly planned and thought-out that many have speculated about the real reasons for it.  Art!

      Hilarious!  Tucker is basically a mouthpiece for the Kremlin and has been a stout supporter of The Nodfather, so to see him criticising the BOOH  is very amusing.  I'm not going to click on the link but can confirm that Tucker is pushing a conspiracy theory that Israel is blackmailing DJ Tango.

       Well, Conrad has been half-joking over on Twitter that Mossad has better - or perhaps worse - kompromat than the old KGB or the current FSB has, and one can only wonder if this is indeed the case.  It must be pretty eye-watering stuff.  No, I am not going to speculate what, I leave that to your sordid imaginations.

On The Scene With Green

Another one from 'Be Amazed' compilation on Youtube, from the 'When Building Demolitions Go Horribly Wrong'.  This one is from Hualien City in Taiwan.  Art!

     You can see the building being prepped for demolition, which has a robust green cladding to prevent anything in the way of rubble falling onto passing people or vehicles.  A sensible safety precaution.  However - O that word again! - the Manbo Hotel demolition team seem to have been a bit over-eager about removing structural components, because - Art!

No, it's not supposed to do that

     Remarkably, nobody was even injured, which is pretty fortunate when six storeys fall over.  The road was blocked, mind.  Art!

     Three empty parked cars were smashed to bits as well.  That probably made for an interesting conversation with their insurance company.  I can't find any subsequent accounts of anyone being charged or prosecuted or jailed, so the story will have to end there.

Another 'What On Earth?' Moment

The universe has a funny way of sending one messages, given that social media is a thing.  Look at this and tell me wh

     What or who is 'CRBN' when it's at home?  What's this 'TF Genesis' they're pimping?  What on earth is 'Pickleball' and can you eat it?   Art!

     Hmmm so this is a Pickleball set up.  Tennis with great big solid rackets and lightweight plastic balls.  Colour me not impressed.

How Could I Resist?

You ought to know by now that Conrad has a taste for bad films, and indeed has a couple of books dedicated to that very subject.  Art!

     I am going to have a sneak peek at the first one, and if I've seen it or not.  Wait one.

Art!

           Never heard of it before, and it's a relative newcomer.  According to the blurb it was a dismally unfunny comedy western.  Not that impressed it features ultra-MAGA and boastfully proud of it Rob Scheider, which is enough for Your Humble Scribe to give it a miss, I fear.

Progress Report

As I have mentioned, one of my current reads is 'Cassino '44' by James Holland, and we have now reached the point of the Second Battle Of Cassino being planned, by General Freyberg.  Art!

Bernie

     As Ol' Jim points out, Bernie was completely out of his depth as a corps commander and wasn't that great at only commanding a single division, either.  Consequently his planning was slapdash and insufficient, reflected in the repeated failure to avoid head-on attacks on Monte Cassino and town.  If Jim has attempted to rehabilitate the reputation of General Mark Clarke, he's determined to do the opposite with Freyberg.  Steady on with the lashings of opprobium Jim lad!

Finally -

Going out with a Biercism.

"Abdomen, n: A shrine enclosing the object of man's sincerest devotion."

 

California Deeming

Settle Down, Settle Down

Let Conrad define 'Deem' for you, as per my 'Collins Concise English Dictionary', which states that it's "To judge or consider" and we will be seeing a lot of considering and judging in this Intro.  O yes indeed!  Art?

     Hmmm.  This, if you can believe it, is a 'Nuclear-powered pogo stick' which is a lot more photogenic than 'South Canadian Manglement', the theme that this Intro is going to delve into.  Don't even touch on The Mamas And The Papas.

     For this Intro - which may turn out to be the whole blog as there's a lot of it - we are going to be concentrating on the Reddit narrator, Burned Out STOre maNager, hereafter BOSTON.  He was a - you may be ahead of me here - store manager in a retail chain he is careful to never mention, but which has to be something like Wal-Mart or Target, whose locations cross the whole of South Canada.  He was working 12 hour shifts across 6 days of the week for $50,000, which is about 20 years adrift from what he ought to have been earning.  Poor bloke, one has to imagine how much worse he'd have been off in the EU, where human slavery is illegal.  Art!

ALLEGEDLY

      One of his more onerous tasks was obtaining sales and credit data of customers, which was particularly problematic as stores did not collect shopper data at end of sales.  THEN their headquarters decided to set up a satellite branch, where BOSTON had absolutely no power or influence and was expected to action their collections, which was a problem as the satellite store didn't even check customer details at application.  One gets the feeling that someone at Corporate hated BOSTON.  Art!

     Make a note of this: over in California, managers were moved from being salaried employees to hourly-paid, a change that looks bad on paper and susceptible to hostile interpretation, as in Wal-Tart trying to stiff people over wages by cutting corners.  They were deeming.

     ANYWAY we find our hero BOSTON pushing back against his boss, whom pushes back even harder, insisting that although BOSTON is not running the satellite site, it's his responsibility to carry out the processes behind it.  Art!

     BOSTON makes sure to collect all his boss's e-mails, faxes, conference calls, texts and SMS, because he is working on the long plan, and you can never have too much back-up.  Today's ghastly digital landscape can provide you with innumerable chances to do yourself in <Conrad crosses himself and invokes a stake of hawthorn>.

     One thing that BOSTON's store needed to carry out was financial reports, being an account of what had been going on across his store AND the satellite store, data that he knew Boston's Ass**** Boss, hereafter BAB would need.  

     

     When BAB turned up on an entirely expected Surprise Visit That Everyone Knew About -  a sure sign that the whole organisation knew of it and anticipated him and that he was not wise - he was hunting for financial reports that BOSTON claimed to have no overview of, in order to cement in BOSTON's responsibility for failure.  When not presented with said reports, he fired BOSTON.

     Who was rubbing his hands gleefully in anticipation.
     BOSTON files for unemployment.  To those unfamiliar with South Canadian employment law, if you file for unemployment and win, your employer has to pay you whilst you remain unemployed, which is why many of them, as in BOSTON's case, fight to prevent paying ex-employees.  Art!

     

Duck duck tank

     There is a face-to-face meeting between BOSTON, BAB and lawyers, where BOSTON prevails, thanks to having having a metric ton of paperwork - as mentioned above - that displays how BAB had set up a toxic workplace, ensuring that they lose the unemployment claim, for the first time in a decade for the company.

     BOSTON sits back and claims unemployment, which might normally be expected to run for weeks, or months, but in this case is for TWO YEARS.  At $1,600 per month this totals $38,400.  You get the feeling that BAB's bosses are losing patience, because paying an ex-employee a living wage for not doing anything rather rubs.  From Corporate hating BOSTON one suspects that they now fear him, an entirely rational feeling and warning of things to come.  One suspects that this is why they were totally against rendering employee benefits in the first pace. Art!

     O go on we will continue to narrate this tale.  

     Prior to BOSTON's tale of East Coast credit consternation, we had a financial farrago on the West Coast, where BOSTON's mysterious employer lost a lawsuit about contractual terms, to the tune of $30 million, which is enough to make any employer sit up and pay attention.  

      They were concerned enough to have BOSTON and his ilk sign weekly affidavits that they were not performing non-manager duties for more than 50% of their working week.  This sounds like management trying to back-fill and retro-actively sort out problems they have created in real time.  Art!

     Here is where we hit what BOSTON and his partners were aiming for, a Class Action Law Suit, which ends up costing their company $15 million. We are not told how many people end up getting paid from this total but you can tell it isn't small or it wouldn't have been mentioned.  I did Google for this case but only found mention of Dollar General and deceptive pricing, not salary amendments or California.

$15M Dollar General Settlement Ends ...

ClassAction.org

https://www.classaction.org › News

Jan 23, 2026 — Dollar General is set to pay $15,000,000 to end a class action lawsuit alleging the retailer regularly charged consumers different prices ...Read more

     Makes $38,400 look like small change, hmmmm?

     Nor is that all.  Remember what I said about BOSTON collecting all the evidence he could about his boss BAB?  In addition to the Class Action lawsuit, he also pursued another lawsuit against the company creating a toxic work environment.  Surprise!  He lost.

     No, only joking.  He won.  There was no mention of how much he got as a payout, only that it was substantial.  Waltarget or whomever decided that BAB had cost them altogether far too much and fired his waffle-patterned bottom.  Ooops.  Art!

This is why Skynet cannot take over the world.  Yet.

     Apparently that's a 'Manager with a waffle-patterned bottom'.

     It turns out that BAB's marriage had only been held together with money, since his wife divorced him once he got the sack.  Ouch.  I bet he regretted the day he got on his Corporate high horse to harass BOSTON.

     Hmmm I just Googled for 'Walmart' and '$15 million' but once again came up empty in terms of BOSTON and his wage Class Action.  I did find that they'd been up to dodgy business with their customers.

"Walmart agreed to a settlement, often cited around $45 million (or in conjunction with other multi-million dollar suits), to resolve claims that it overcharged customers for weighted goods (meat, poultry, pork, seafood) and bagged citrus between October 19, 2018, and January 19, 2024"

     Yeah, gotta beware of the old bagged citrus, the hidden viper.  One has to stop and ponder why potatoes or onions weren't in there instead.

     And there we have today's blog, an Intro in it's entirety, because when I wrote out the whole tale it came to over a sheet of A4 narrow-ruled, so you get the benefit of all that.  Art!

     A waffle-patterned bottom, in case you were wondering.

 

Meet The Atomic Brain-Scanner!

 After All, If You're Going To Have A Brain Scanner

Why not make it acomic-powered?  Then you can scan brains from several miles away if need be, or use it to fry eggs.  Art!

     Hmmm I'm not sure if the AI Art Generator has really grasped what we're going for here.  Conrad didn't expect a brain scanner that consists of 50% brains itself.  Shall we try again?  Art!

     More like it, except this gizmo seems capable of destroying an entire city if it misfires.  O well, eggs and omelettes and all that.

     Okay, enough of the pleasantries, let's get going with the links.

2025

BOOJUM!: Okay, Okay, I'll Translate

2024

BOOJUM!: Batrachomyomachia!

2023

BOOJUM!: Up For The Chop

2022

BOOJUM!: O Marvellous Mars!

2021

BOOJUM!: Kritikal At Krithia

2020

BOOJUM!: 24 Frames A Second

2019

BOOJUM!: Conrad Is - Apprehensive

2018

BOOJUM!: The Very Big Bang Indeed Theory

2017

BOOJUM!: Tok Jo!

2016

BOOJUM!: Illboard

2015

BOOJUM!: The Fearsome Frog - That Ate Boss Hogg!

2014

BOOJUM!: Late For A Saturday

Different Stokes

No!  That Is Not A Typo

Just to confirm we are back to our usual hateful horrid self today.  That title is an hilarious pun I tell you, hilarious!  Laugh or it's the Remote Nuclear Tormentor for you all.  Art!

Possibly a RNT

     No, Conrad is not babbling about that sitcom from - the Eighties?  Whenever.  Okay, okay, as proof I am not raving we'll prod Art awake and demand an illo.

<sigh 1/10 for spelling>

     A couple of BOOJUM!s ago I prattled on about sound ranging in the First Unpleasantness, and how remarkably advanced it was for the time, helping the British - NOT 'the English' as Teuton staff officers wrote - army to locate Teuton artillery accurately.

     In this Intro we're going to be looking at another British innovation of the Second Unpleasantness.  First of all we need to lay down a bit of background.  Art!

    This is the 'Stokes Gun', as it was originally known, being invented by a chap called Stokes, and it's the great-grandaddy of all contemporary mortars, as they are now known.  Robert Graves, in his 'Goodbye To All That' mentions 'the efficient but greedy Stokes Gun', as a decent mortar team could have as many as ten bombs on their way before the first had landed.

     Mortars don't have the range a conventional artillery piece does, but they could be broken down into baseplate, barrel and bipod and carried around by their crew.  Typically their range is relatively short, but they were present in the front lines and could immediately put down fire when needed - no need to radio up a chain of command to get artillery support.  Art!

Photographer standing Danger Close

     By July of 1944, the British army recognised that indirect fire from Teuton weapons, most especially their mortars, was exerting a very serious affect on the battlefield.  They needed to come up with a solution.  Art!

     I am now cribbing notes from the work above, by Professor Buckley, who knows of what he speaks.  

     One statistic he quotes is that it required 1,700 artillery rounds to be able to saturate an area of 100 PROUD IMPERIAL square yards, so methods of improving accuracy were researched.  Art!

GL III radar set

     It stands for 'Gun Laying'.  As is clearly visible, it was a radar set carried in a trailer, with it's own generator, being gifted mobility thanks to the innovative use of the cavity magnetron.  It was specifically designed and intended to locate Teuton mortars, which it could do to within 50 yards.  They were used at Corps level, with a dedicated artillery group responding to target data.  Professor Buckley gives the example of XXX Corps, where the dedicated group consisted of a battery of 7.2" guns, a troop of 5.5" guns, a troop of 3.7" guns, plus at least six platoons of 4.2" and six 3" mortars, plus divisional artillery on call, or another 140 guns.  For anyone not familiar with artillery, that is an awful lot of firepower.  Art!

     This banging beast is a 7.2" howitzer, the same type that Gunner Milligan crewed.  It could fire a 200 pound shell over nine miles, so six of these firing a salvo would land half a ton of ordnance on a target.  Art!

     Here's a 'Five-Five' as it was known, and the very high velocity 3.7" AA gun, often used in a ground role from D-Day onwards as there weren't many Teuton planes around.

     ANYWAY these Counter-Mortar groups went into operation late in 1944, gaining experience and ironing out teething troubles, as with all newly-issued kit.

     At first they were effective only in disrupting Teuton mortars, forcing them to relocate out of the target area, but by the time Germany proper had been invaded, they were getting accurate enough to destroy the mortar and it's crew. A Teuton PoW recounted a tale about being reviled by other Teuton soldiers as he was part of a mortar team; his fellow stubble-hoppers knew quite well what kind of devastating counter-battery fire would fall upon them if the mortar started firing.  The Teutons simply had no counter to this kind of technological application and had to sit there and take it.  Art!

Stokes Gun broken down for moving

     The Teuton landser's woe reminds me of an anecdote related by a Stokes Gun crewman in the First Unpleasantness, where the Teutons had come to hate and fear the mortar, which would be set up in the front lines.  The crew would merrily  fire off their stock of bombs and then relocate elsewhere, whilst the tommies left in that area would suffer from the Teuton counterbattery fire.  Matey and his crew had set up in a location they were directed to at night: come morning they discovered that the mortar position, which they would have to man, was in plain sight of Teuton lines.  They moved.

     ALL HAIL THE CAVITY MAGNETRON! which is a story in itself.
     

Beavis And Butthead Butt Heads

Not entirely unexpectedly, Just Dismal has come back from Islamabad with no agreement, Iran not being interested in backing down and still holding control of the Straits of Hormuz.  Art!

     This is what I've already stated he will do, and I spoke truer than I realised, as this news item states -

"The US president acknowledged as much in jest before Easter, when Mr Vance was engaged in indirect backchannel negotiations with a pragmatist faction in Tehran, saying: “If it doesn’t happen, I’m blaming JD Vance. If it does happen, I’m taking full credit.”

     Hmmm I'm typing this on Hungarian general election day, which Orban is predicted to lose bigly, which Donnie Dorko will probably also blame Just Dismal for, thanks to his recent visit.  Who's laughing now?

     O and here's another picture of King Piggy looking bad.  Art!

     Thank you David!  My my, he looks as bald as he really is in that second photo.

     Don't worry, I have a small bank of other hideous photos of Fat Caligula.

Being On The Bucket List

Just not in a good way, or a way you expected.  Another clip from 'Be Amazed's 'When Building Demolitions Go Horribly Wrong', and an abject example of why you DON'T walk under heavy plant equipment.  Art!

     Compelled by his magpie genes, Idiot In Yellow sees something shiny and immediately wants it.  Art!

     You can probably guess where this is going.  Art!

     Bucket detaches in a way that ought not to be possible.

     He is miraculously unscathed, although probably needs a change of underwear.  BA speculates that both pins holding the bucket onto the excavator arm broke at the same time, with the more cynical Conrad wondering if they were ever in place to begin with.

 We're Only Here For The Beer Part Two

I haven't yet tasted the Bacchus Cherry Beer so cannot report back on that yet.   Here's one I took earlier.  Art!

 
     Conrad was forced - forced, I tell you! - to purchase a four-pack of this brew as they had run out of Old Speckled Hen, which is another black mark for Morrisons when I take over an

     ANYWAY AGAIN it's a nice light citrussy ale, very similar to 'The Terminator', with the added advantage of costing half as much.  Having exploited the latter's tin design as much as possible, I no longer need to pay £4 per can for it.  Ha!

Hmmm Go On Then

Conrad is going to click the very obvious clickbait.  Art!

     This is Ashley Jackson, who moved to the UK four years ago.  What horrors has she had to adapt to?

1)  Pet names.  'Darling' as an example.

2)  Corner shops.  In South Canada you need to drive to the mall.

3)  Butter on bread.  Say what?  Ah - they doubtless use an hideous chemical concoction full of yellow food colouring in South Canada.

Finally - 

Another QI quote.

"Oregonians don't tan, they rust."  Oregon proverb.  Sounds just like home!

More Of 'Cart Rubble'

I Checked And Yes, I've Used This One Before

Back in February, with a long preamble about hilarious misinterpretations of common phrases.  There is a word for this, although it isn't in either my 'Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable' nor my 'Collins Concise English Dictionary'.  To what do I refer?  Why, 'Mondegreen', a word coined by Sylvia Wright in 1954.  She had heard the lyrics to a song, which were 'Laid him on the green' that she heard as 'Lady Mondegreen'.

      ANYWAY Art!

     I back-added this one in because Car Trouble is more impactful that a wooden truck hauling builders waste.

Like it says on the tin.  Cart Rubble.

     I have my own Mondegreen story to tell, which I won't labour with here, so have a link instead:

BOOJUM!: If I Were To Say "Baba Yaga"

     ANYWAY AGAIN I have a theme for this Intro of 'Car Trouble', specifically cars that have been overloaded in extremis.  We shall be skipping across three continents, so here's the African entry.  Art!

     The errant driver here was arrested in Nigeria, by the 'Cham Unit Command' of the 'Federal Road Safety Corps', neither of which either you or I knew existed before this very Intro.  His licence had expired.  No! only joking.  He seems to have added another car on top of the lower one, then cunningly camouflaged it with luggage.  You can tell how distressed the suspension is by looking at the rear tyre and comparing it with the front one, which is usually the one to be flatter thanks to bearing the weight of the engine.  Art!

Waldorf, Maryland

     This is one I remembered from 'Snopes', the  myth-busting website.  Yes, it's real, not Photoshopped.  The car was parked in the lot of an 'International House Of Pancakes' and had loaded up at Home Depot next door before a passerby noticed and took this photo.  The store manager at HD had the driver sign a waiver before loading up the car.  Not only is there half a ton of lumber on the roof, there are an additional ten 160 pound bags of cement in the back seat.  The driver was out jogging up and down the pavement whilst his female passenger was zonked out in the front seat, and both, according to witnesses, were off their gourds on Bad Chemicals.  Art!

     There doesn't appear to be any more news about the car or couple, even after doing a bit of Google-fu.  Okay, that was the American component of this Intro.  Art!

     Meet the European entry here.  If the previous two items were down to sheer stupidity and drugs, this one is down to quiet despair.  The picture is from Kyiv, a couple of days ago.  The driver, Pan Mykola, aged 70, had been living in the Donetsk oblast until his wife died, whereupon he moved to Chernihiv.  After four years he decided to move to the city of Uman.  Art!

     Or, 220 PROUD IMPERIAL miles.  Not a mere hop, skip and jump.  He had all his belongings loaded onto or into his car, including his pet dog and 18 (!) chickens in cages.  For the eggs, one suspects.  He got as far as Kyiv and his ancient car gave up the ghost, as you can tell from the bonnet* being up.  

     One thing I cannot represent here is the song being played in the background - a cover of Cherry Ghost's 'People Help The People', a point I explained on the Tweet itself, to several people's appreciation.

     ANYWAY ANYWAY one suspects that, had this happened in Mordorvia, his dog would have been chased away, his chickens stolen and everything not tied down looted.  Not to paint Ukrainians as saints, but the locals contacted the police, who turned up.  Art!

     Tempering justice with mercy, they didn't arrest him or give him a hard time.  No, instead they gave him a tow to the nearest garage.  Art!

     That police car must have a beast of an engine to be able to tow the Travelling Home And Contents.  O and thanks to 'Anton Gerashchenko' for posting this story.  

     The subsequent update had a couple of still shots of Pan Mykola's car at the garage, which the Ukrainians call a 'Repair station'.  Art!

     Dog just visible.  I've enlarged this photo as I missed Fido on a casual look.  He - or she - looks quite settled and comfy.  Art!

     The chariot in all it's overloaded glory, with a couple of mechanic's tools in view.  To prove that they were utterly upstanding chaps, the garage did not charge him anything.  Once repaired, he was able to continue his journey to Uman and arrived safely after another 130 miles of transit.  People helping people indeed.  O do you have a bit of grit in your eye?

     The story isn't finished yet.  Another Tweet from 'Lesya Ukraina' on Twitter - ha! take that Elong Tusk! - continued the tale.  I will just post his Tweet - 

Co-founder of Monobank Oleg Gorokhovsky promised to gift a new car to the man whose video with an old car touched social media. He reported that he has already contacted the man and will hand over a new pickup truck to him.

     It's almost enough to restore my faith in Hom. Sap.

You dodged a bullet there, the original Intro I was slanting for was another on wartime innovation.  It will still come.  I bet you can hardly wait.

Beavis And Butthead Strike Again

I refer, of course - obviously! - to J D Vance and Donnie Dorko.  You can argue between yourselves about which is which.  You see, Just Dismal has been sent to Pakistan to hold negotiations with an Iranian delegation, on how to stop the Special Military Combat Operation and reset everything back to what it was before February 28th.  Art!

     This is after his stopover in Hungary to protest Ukraine's alleged interference in the upcoming election, and promote Orban The Weretoad, the irony of which burns hotter than the heart of the sun.  His spectral presence caused Orban to lose another 3% of the vote.  Art!

     Ol' Turkey Neck again, in another unflattering photo of him.  You'll notice that it's not him doing the negotiating in Pakistan, so if it all goes pear-shaped, he has complete deniability, and if it's a success, he'll swoop in to take all the credit, as is his operating style since the Eighties.

     O and I just came across a complementary news item on my feed, which I will post the thumbnail for.  Art!

    Just Dismal is going to need more than eyeliner to get around this.

Yet Another 'You What?' Moment

I am beginning to see a pattern here, and am wondering if the universe is trying to tell me something.  It would be handier if it could manage a social media post or a postcard, rather than me trying to read goat entrails or tea leaves at the bottom of a cup.  Art!

     The news feed is back to pimping Tektronix again, although this model seems to be different from the other oscilloscope they were pimping previously.  Perhaps my railing against them is being picked up by AI as me wanting yet more oscilloscopery?

I'm Only Here For The Beer

And the gin, too, just to be clear.  Allow me to introduce another bottle of beer purchased because it looked interesting, without regards for taste.  Art!

     'Bacchus Cherry Beer' for those unable to resolve the small print.  Conrad is unsure about a cherry-flavoured beer but it willing to try it once.

I Haven't Covered This Much

So here's a snippet to keep the story simmering.  The Artemis II crew splashed down safely after completing their absolutely historic trans-lunar mission, the first such for 50 years.  Art!

     This time there were four crew - one cannot say 'crewmen' any longer as one was a gel - one is black and one is from Canuckistan, which is a measure of what progress NASA has made in five decades.  Conrad is too classy to go over their toilet arrangements.

Finally -

Glad I took Edna trotties ten minutes ago, the rains have returned.  April weather!

*  NOT THE 'HOOD'.  This is The Hood -