The Bottomhole Line

How Do You Like That Title, I Made It Up All By Myself

It's an adaptation of 'The bottom line' which is what South Canadian management slaver about and consider the be-all and end-all of human existence.  Your view may vary.

     ANYWAY before we get any further, I would like to introduce you to the Medieval English 'Wose' (the shortened form of 'Woodwose') the plural of which I am ordering to be 'Woses'.  Art!

WOSES

     The woses were primitive men of the forest, who did without plumbed toilets and wetwipes.  Nowadays they have to contend with deforestation and global warming, the woes of the wose, you might say.  So, if they were WOSES, the opposite must be SESOW?

     Don't worry, we haven't forgotten today's title, which is being narrated by the SEnior SOftWare engineer of Enormously Successful Software Organisation, hereafter ESSO - ah - yes well moving swiftly on.  Thanks to the 'Ripe' Youtube channel for this tale of greed leavened with stupidity.  SESOW is as up-to-the minute as it's possible to be, a citizen of the twenty-first century, the polar opposite of an unwashed nutter who thinks a pointy stick is the pinnacle of technology.  Art!

     That's SESOW after eight years with ESSO - er - yes - having worked his way up from Junior Developer, designing systems along the way that saved them millions, as well as having several patents with the business.  RED HERRING AHOY! don't worry about the patents, they don't recur.  

     Let me explain about the bottom line.  This is a company's final balance sheet, showing if it made a profit or loss over the year, and people at the C-suite level like to see the bottom line showing a profit, because this means they get A BIG FAT BONUS.  The greedier and stupider C-suite members don't care about the company long term, only about their BIG FAT BONUS.  Did I mention the BIG FAT BONUS enough?

    Who else got a bonus?  Why the senior staff, awarded on an annual basis if they hit their KPIs, as SESOW had done, and whom looked to be getting $25,000 later in the year, as long as they were still gainfully employed.

    Under SESOW's contract, which he'd signed 8 years ago at this date, he got a severance package based on length of service, performance and <drum roll trumpet flourish> the company's valuation.  AT TERMINATION.  There was nobody left at ESSO - um - yes, well - who knew this salient fact, certainly not Buzzword Bottomhole the CEO, who had only been appointed 18 months previously.

     BB then began a process of 'interviewing' all the senior staff in 1-2-1  meetings, including SESOW, whom was told he was being fired the day before his bonus was due.  Ooops.  Art!

     "We are making organisational changes, and I've been asked to evaluate the cost structure, especially in engineering," quoth BB, none of which was true, as the reasons for being fired.  

     A furious SESOW went home and re-read his contract.  Yup.  His severance is to be calculated using base salary, length of service, performance ratings and ESSO's - hm - well - current valuation.  When he originally signed his contract the business had been worth $50 million; eight years later it was worth at least $200 million.  He calculated his severance payment, which topped out at <trumpet flourish drum roll> $1.5 million.  

     Oooops.

     At the official termination meeting, BB offers three month's salary as severance (possibly in the region of $50,000), claiming that "Our legal team reviewed your file", which is revealed as a blatant lie when SESOW presents his actual termination sum.  BB goes white and stammers that their attorneys will need to look through it WHICH THEY HAD ALREADY DONE according to his previous statement.  Someone is telling porky pies.  Art!

Great big ones, too

     Tellingly, CEO, in his panicked state, admits that the Board knew nothing about SESOW's contractual details.  Which is ESSO's - yeah - well - problem, not SESOW's.

     The company's legal team, the Chief Financial Officer and a Board member all try to deny the severance, by arguing:

1)  It should have been based on the original valuation date.  Instantly shot down by the contractual details.

2)  His performance was insufficient, except he had 8 Exceeding ratings.

3)  Terminated for cause, dropped within 5 minutes due to 0% evidence.

4)  It was a typo.  Not SESOW's problem!  Art!

You'll see

     Two weeks later the company lawyers declared the contract 'iron-clad' and they had to pay SESOW.

     Lo and behold, the furious Board immediately conducted an investigation into what happened, focussing on Buzzword Bottomhole.  They find he had been doing lots of unilateral actions such as the one they were furious about, without notifying the Board nor seeking legal counsel - I told you "Our legal team reviewed your file" was a lie - and forced him to resign two months later.  Why not fire him?  If they did that then they'd have to pay his unemployment.

     SESOW thus had enough money to sit around and decide what to do next, which for good or ill did not involve returning to ESSO - phew last use of that acronym - and instead set up his own consulting company.  I think they'd be too ashamed to ever make him an offer.  Art!

     The business reviewed everyone's contracts to ensure there were no more financial booby-traps a-waiting, better late than never I suppose.

The Ever-Shrinking Suit

Lawsuit, that is.  I refer, of course - obviously! - to Fat Caligula's $10 billion lawsuit against the BBC, which has now dropped the economic part completely, since it meant King Piggy would need to permit the Beeb's attorneys access to all his financial details.  Can't have that!  Art?

     Enter Richard Cooper, BBC Director of Digital Distribution, brought a set of data that rather undercut's DJ Tango's allegations that his reputation was harmed by the 'Panorama' program.  For one thing, it was never shown on South Canadian television.  Therefore, anyone being influenced would have had to stream it.

     570,000 people streamed it.  O that's a lot! I hear you quaver.

     Yes, except only 285 of those were South Canadian.

     Only 35 were in Florida.

     The figures are for the whole of 2024, not the week leading up to the election.

     So, as many as 6 people may have seen it in that week pre-election, or 0.6 people in Florida.  

     I am not an attorney but I don't think this case is going to yield more than a few cents for BOOH.  Art!

Cheapo Lipton Alternative Is A Go

You will have seen bottles of the Lipton's 'Iced Tea' carbonated swill for sale in shops, and jolly pricey it is too.  Art!

     £2.20 for a bottle.  Conrad likes it, though not that much.  So, what does an inventive yet penny-pinching eldster do?  Art!

     He gets a bottle of the cheapest lemonade going at Lidl, for all of £0.50, empties out a few inches, sticks a funnel in the top and pours in a heaped tablespoon of loose leaf tea.  Leave for a couple of hours and voila, tea-flavoured lemonade, quite distinctive in nature.  Nil alcohol content thanks to the Summer of Sober (Day 78 so far).

No, For Obvious Reasons

The news algorithm is throwing up wobblers again.  Art!

     No.  No, it is not.  Conrad lives in This Sceptred Isle, with a whole ocean between South Canada and I.  Besides which, our codes are 'Post Codes', which I deal with many times daily in my work routine and which are far better-named.

     Also, if you left a vehicle registration plate at the side of the road in Texas, by morning it would have been riddled with gunfire.  Beer and guns, a winning combination where nothing can possibly go wrong.

Finally -

Conrad is now onto Episode 8 of 'Falling Skies' and has to confess I didn't recognise Noah Wyle absent the filthy furry face fungus.  Art!

     Conrad, being a pedant of the very worst, or best, <delete where applicable> kind, wondered how long it took him to grow the beard and 'tache back for subsequent episodes?  Enquiring minds would like to know.

Time Out Of Joint

If You're Reading This, It Means I'm

Already en route to Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell, as I have a schedule to keep in order to get to 'Bin Da Bul' by 12:00 mid-day.  This is the Korean restaurant Darling Daughter and I went to for my 64th birthday in 2025, shortly after she accidentally dug a big hole in her hand with a chisel.  It did not affect her eating ability.  This was where she showed off her instant-print camera, snapping a photo that showed Conrad in all his Dismal Dad attitude.  Art!

     Ah, so that's the title.  I apologise for channelling entirely too much Count.  

     ANYWAY time for the links.

2025

BOOJUM!: Bear With Me As We Oscillate Mildly

2024

BOOJUM!: Terra In The Skies

2023

BOOJUM!: That's A Relier!

2022

BOOJUM!: How Very Astute

2021

BOOJUM!: Armstrong Whitworth!

2020

BOOJUM!: I Say, I Say, It's "The Longest Day"!

2019

BOOJUM!: A Constructive Day

2018

BOOJUM!: Out For A Dux

2017

BOOJUM!: The Darjeeling Buds Of May

2016

BOOJUM!: "What Will You Blog About Today?"

2015

BOOJUM!: "Tattered Lace Crafting"

2014

BOOJUM!: Pre-Emptive Precautionary Placeholder Post

2013

BOOJUM!: A Swig of the Cava

You Can Probably Guess What This Intro Is Going To Be About

By The Terrible Punning Illo I Have Put Up

Which, if Art will get off his waffle-patterned derriere -

Cart rubble

     It makes more sense when read aloud.  Yes, we are going to be getting to 'It's Like A Sports Car Part Two' in due course, but since I'm not sure how much I can pad it out, Your Humble Scribe is going to be leading with a bit of motor misery for the myrmidons of Mordrovia.  Current info courtesy of 'Jay In Kyiv'.  Art!

     The return of the fuel queue, this one being in Archangelsk up in the far north of Mordorvia, 1,400 kilometres from Ukraine, and if this persists for another month those drivers are going to be queueing in sub-zero conditions with snow to boot.  Art!

     Coming to you from Rostov-na-Dron, "Rostov gdye est benzin" so you now know the Ruffian for 'Rostov is out of petrol'.  Missy here is complaining that she has a wedding to attend, except her car is almost out of petrol and none of the petrol stations in Rostov have petrol, so the wedding party is going to be one down unless she can siphon a neighbour's tank.  Art!

     This is in Smolensk, which is 735 PROUD IMPERIAL MILES from Archangelsk, and thank you for posting, 'Anarcchist-35'.  You might want to prepare for the FSB to visit for a little chat.

     Why the sudden return of fuel queues?  Well, the Ukrainians never stopped hitting Ruffian oil refineries, leading to the orcs needing to - not a sentence you probably expected to hear - importing petrol into Ruffia.  Now from Morocco and India.  The latter is hilariously ironic.  Art!

     The Indians are acquiring cheap Ruffian crude, as they won't buy it without a hefty discount, then refining it into petrol and selling it back to Ruffia at a healthy premium, because profits come a long way ahead of political alliances.

     Shortages may also have been caused by Ruffian 'refineries' - using that word advisedly - stopping the production of Euro-2 and Euro-3 standard fuels, which had 15 and 50 times the permitted sulphur level.  This 'Donkey ****', as the orcs dubbed it, could be produced far faster than proper petrol, causing shortages to drop.  Until orcs realised it was destroying their car engines.

     ANYWAY talking about car engines segues us back into 'It's Like A Sports Car Part Two', where Car-l explained that the Pontiac GTO he won from Klutzy Kar Ken had a new specialty engine added, worth $45,000 on it's own.  Art!

An engine.  Don't ask me what sort.

     Car-l calculated that the Pontiac itself was thus worth about $65,000, because KKK came back with a $100,000 lawsuit, that being the total amount he had taken out in a bank loan for his car and mods.  If you punted that much for it, KKK, you ought not to have casually wagered it in a trackside bet.

     The case against Car-l is deemed frivolous and binned after he spent all of $500 on it.

     Then comes the countersuit, for Car-l (and his Winning Wifey) are business owners.  Car-l has 4 of them and reckons his hourly rate to be $1,800 per hour, with WW only (!) earning $300 per hour.  They are determined to make KKK regret he ever crawled out of his hole and slandered WW.  Art!

     They file for PPOs - restraining orders - plus defamation plus legal fees plus loss of earnings, totalling $18,000.  When attending court they use the GTO, which KKK witnesses and narrowly avoids stroking out due to rage, also managing not to say (for which read 'shriek') anything.  You may think this displays self-awareness - you'd be WRONG.  WRONG.  O so wrong!

     You see, KKK insists on a hearing in court, which the judge allows, listening with interest to his threats and aggression and claims of being about to lose his house and how he was 'forced into the bet' thanks to 'fear of violence' in a rant that goes on for 15 minutes.  Art!

     Why didn't the judge intervene?  I think the legal concept 'Sui sibi gladio hunc jugulo' applies here, literally 'I slay this man with his own sword' or 'Giving him enough rope'.  

     You see, Car-l's cars were all fitted with Blackvue Systems camera and audio, a system I'd never heard of before but which records inside and outside the car, with audio, over a 270º span.  The footage was played back in court, displaying KKK's accepting the bet without any quibbling, then his 15-minute shrieking rant about how WW got lucky, and finally his unprovoked sucker punch of Car-l.  Art!

View the Vue

     End result: Car-l and WW get three-year PPOs granted against KKK. as well as a $5,000 settlement.  Not $18,000 but not chickenfeed either.  KKK is also found in contempt of court and having committed perjury.  He gets a $3,000 fine - and a week in prison.  This is long enough to give him a permanent record, which may compensate for the missing $13,000.  No mention of a Mrs KKK so he may not have a marriage to risk.

     None of the parties aforementioned had any problems with fuelling their cars.

Progress Report

I like to keep you informed.  Conrad watched and annotated Episode 13 of 'The Great War', which makes me halfway through the whole series.  The episode dealt principally with the Somme, although Italy and Russia make guest appearances.  Art!

     It's that man again!

     Once again no credits given to the various Talking Heads, with one Ocker veteran being allowed to swear quite vehemently against the Teutons.  Before the watershed in 1964, what on earth is the world coming to, questions raised in Parliament, 'The Times' posts an editorial etcetera etcetera.

More Ungentle Shoeing

We continue to provide you with a valuable service in displaying what the Big Orange Oaf Himself looks like in reality, rather than in a carefully-monitored studio environment.  Of late he seems to be deliquescing - not a word you expected to see today - when in public and attempting to speak without slurring or blanking.  Art!

     Cherish every pixel!  From Youtube and 'Farron Balanced' on 12/08/2026.  He looks like a sentient ham knuckle.  Or he's having trouble grasping the concept of the ballfoot game's offside rule*.

Bring On The Bruce

From the ghastly to the ghostly, we return to the artworks of Bruce Pennington as selected for the Youtube channel 'Sci-Fi Art', which concentrates on pictures of sprouting potatoes NO ONLY TESTING pictures of things that are not nor cannot be, except in an artist's mind.  Art!

     Saturn again, at an angle, as this gives one a view of the rings from a more impressive angle than edge on.  Viewpoint is one of the moons, in what seems like a canyon that recedes to the horizon, flanked by Bruce's usual baroque terrain, and I hope you noticed the tiny human figure just off-centre.  Art!

     Now you know why there was so much space in outer space.  Hello to the novel title.  Conrad is unsure which bit of a Saturnian satellite encapsulates 'infinity', surely a map of galaxies would be more apt?  Actually reading the precis makes it sound verrry complicated, what with time travel and alternate realities and sprouting potatoes**.

A Role Model For The Ages

There is now a 'King Of The Hill' WD40 special edition can available, but only in South Canada if I'm correct.  Art!

     I would be tempted.  Hank is a thoroughly decent chap with a sound moral compass, if perhaps a bit of a dinosaur in today's world, a situation Conrad can thoroughly understand.  Hang on - 

     <sad face> no, restricted to Home Depot in South Canada.

     Bah!

Finally -

I need to finish and post this, the cloud layer dispersed earlier on, making it ideal weather to walk the woofer, if only other woofer-walkers abstain.  However, a load of cumulus seems to be oozing it's way into the heavens o'erhead, so - haste must be made!

*  In essence, it's to stop players loitering at their opponent's goal at the opposite end of the pitch in hopes of catching a long ball.

**  Perhaps.  Prove they aren't present.

"It's Like A Sports Car!" - Part One

This Intro Will Allow Me To Get Rid Of A Bookmark

 - that has been sitting in Youtube's 'Watch Later' for months.  It's from the 'Australian Armour And Artillery Museum' and concerns two of their rebuilds being taken for a drive around their trials course.  The driver is named 'Kurt', which seems rather apt for the last vehicle he drove.  Art!

     That above is the 'Stug III', short for 'Sturmgeschutz III', an assault gun cobbled together from the chassis of an obsolete Panzer III and a 75 mm anti-ank gun, designed with absolutely no regards for ergonomics.  Art!

Kurt is contorting himself into knots here to change gears.  Art!
     Then you have this, a Cromwell, capable in it's early variants of hitting 45 PROUD IMPERIAL MILES per hour, and which Kurt declares to be akin to a sports car, which is where we get our title for today from.  Compared to the lowly Stug's plodding 25 mph.
     The dragway here is typical of a drag strip, being dead straight, flat and paved, used for side-by-side racing over 1/8th or 1/4th of a mile.  Car-l informed that this particular event was a 'no-prep', meaning the surface lacked any kind of additives to aid sports cars with traction.  He and Winning Wifey took along a trio of cars, which he describes as an '1996 Honda Civic Hatchback sporting an engine swap', and if Art will put down his bowl of coal -
     Their other car was a Japanese import not available commercially in South Canada: a Nissan Laurel.  Art!
     There was a 3rd car that plays no part, so it's not getting a description.
     Hmmm.  So much for AI.  I don't see any drivers.
      This striking image is from a burning Wildberries warehouse complex - is there any other kind now? - in Samara.  Conrad,  only lightly anchored in reality, recognised the signature title credits of 'Doctor Who', Sixties iteration.  Art!
     Bruce tends to focus on subject matter that isn't all hardware and spaceships, but he manages a credible rendering of 'Discovery One' as inspired by the film "2001", in a rather Vincent Di Fate style, whom is another story from a different kitchen.  Art!
or yuIt is

     ANYWAY of course - obviously! - that has verrrry little to do with the rest of the Intro, which is dedicated to a Youtube tale of revenge that I found fascinating as it refers to sports cars, an area I know 0.0% of, but am willing to take direction in.  I will dub the narrator 'Car-l' because I like to make you wince, and his other half will be Winning Wifey.  His tale comes in two parts, the first of which takes place at a drag strip WASH OUT YOUR FILTHY MINDS we're talking about a specialist race track.  Art!

     By 20:00 hours our protagonists had accumulated the not-inconsiderable sum of $20,000 thanks to winning 'small wagers' across the day as they competed with other drag racers.  They were looking to pack up their kit and roll, when Klutzy Kar Ken made an entrance, hereafter abbreviated to KKK.  He was brash, pushy, loud, a dyed-in-the-bones misogynist and tried proposing a $10,000 wager on a race between his car (a 1969 Pontiac GTO) Art!

It's like a sports car.
Because it is one.

     and Car-l.  After hearing KKK repeatedly insulting his wife, Car-l suggest they race her in the Laurel against KKK, whole huge yet fragile male ego cannot resist the lure of both verbally and mechanically beating Winning Wifey.

     Our Man Of Motor also puts it to KKK that they race for possession of each other's car, by depositing their pink title slips with a race official.  Whom doesn't seem to bat an eyelid at such a wager, implying that it's not exactly commonplace yet not novel either.  Car-l later goes into a bit of corroborative detail about how such betting is perfectly legal, just as much as placing a bet on a horse.  Thanks, Car-l, we'll take that as a given.  Art!

     ANYWAY ANYWAY the race is over a quarter-mile.  KKK pulls ahead immediately off the start line, and is then beaten by Winning Wifey, whom lives up to her name.  This is not a photo-finish, there is exactly 0% debate about who won and who lost.

     You can probably guess how this goes.  Car-l and WW go to the track official holding the title deeds and pick up both, and then go to visit KKK.

     Who flies into a fiery rage, denying that SHE won, SHE got lucky, SHE needs to do best out of three, SHE's not getting the car - on and on for 15 minutes.  Car-l notices that KKK has, unwisely ('wise' seems a concept he has very little grasp of) left the keys in the car, which he deftly snaffles.  Art!

Hard to find a good sucker punch illo

     Car-l is then sucker-punched by KKK, whom still refuses  to admit defeat, threatening to call the police - 

     Until the Track Owner - a lot more wholesome a title than 'Drag Strip Owner' - turns up, tells KKK to leave before the police are called to trespass him, and that he's banned from the track.

     Car-l and Winning Wifey leave, with the GTO in tow.

     Here we shall end Part One, which has been focussed around the cars and racetrack.  Part Two has stupidity ladled upon a heaping serving of stupidity, with a stupidity side and liquid stupidity to wash it down with.  Did I mention stupidity?

They can play the soundtrack

You've Gotten Off Lightly So Far

By which I mean all the highly kinetic events taking place in Ukraine and Mordorvia.  The Ruffians are continuing with their Murder Missile Mission, which they have been waging since 22/02/2022.  The orcs have a very shallow learning curve.

      Meanwhile the Ukrainians are continuing to find new and interesting things to hit with their drone waves every night. 'Waves' is the appropriate noun, they occur in the hundreds, up to 400 of the Furious Birds nightly.  Art!

Work with me on this

The Prof Is Emptying My Wallet Again

Or trying to, and it's still 2 weeks until payday.  His last recommendation was a couple of murder mystery novels from a Croatian author, which are only just out in paperback and thus unlikely to be around as second-hand copies on Abebooks any time soon.  Art!

As recommended by Professor P. Caddick-Adams, the piker

     0P VERITABLE was the British army's crossing of the Rhine and invasion of Germany proper in early 1945.  No, it was not all over bar the shouting, there was a lot of blood spilled in what was not a mere cakewalk.

     Hmmmm. I wonder how much it costs? 

     £45! Plus I was wrong, it's only available in hardback. Maybe 2027.

Bring On The Brucey

Pennington, that is, as featured on the 'Sci-Fi Art' Youtube channel.  Which we've looked at previously, when it was dealing with Angus McKie.  Conrad has seen other vlogs they have, focussing on other artists, some of whom I recognise with more I do not.  Art!

I

     You ought to have recognised the 'Title Gap' at the top of his illo here, so the publisher can add in whatever the title will be.  Since the gap here isn't that large, they can't use a whole lot of words.  I note that they didn't re-use this illustration for a completely different novel, such as 'Lord Of The Rings' mind you Ol' Clarkey did set his original Discovery mission towards Saturn, which does have rings - or am I overthinking this?

 A Final Ungentle Shoeing

Only for this blog today, don't worry, I haven't acquired a sudden sense of good taste, mercy or toleration.  Art!

Mister Entirely Misplaced Smugness is seen here in one of his more perilous situations, including all the assassination attempts: being in the vicinity of Marine One, the giant helicopter responsible for transferring his gargantuan bulk around.  The rotor downdraft is so powerful it's revealed his baldness hidden by the Hair Helmet, which may be why he's resorted to a large piece of wool, woven into his scalp.  

     There's a pulp comic strip that Smuggy reminds me of, just can't place the artist yet.  One of the 'Mister Monster' spin-offs, I think.  I shall dig and get back to you.

The Siege Of Liege

Ha!  Fooled You, There Have Been Numerous Sieges

 - of this Belgian town over the centuries, the most recent being the one carried out by the Teutons in 1914, during the opening days of the First Unpleasantness, which is the one I want to briefly touch upon, as - you may be ahead of me here - this preamble is not the main Intro.  Art!

    It's surprisingly difficult to find photographs of the 12 forts before the siege began, so that above will have to serve.  They were huge concrete structures erected in the late 19th century as a 'Just In Case' if the Teutons or French got over-frisky.  They lasted all of 11 days in August 1914, the last one falling on August 16 as the Teutons annihilated them with special super-heavy artillery designed for just such a job.  Art!

The 'After' pictures

     Including some Austro-Hungarian special Skoda 'morsers' borrowed specifically for the operation.  

     The ring of forts, as mentioned, lasted only 11 days when under Teuton  bombardment, with one weakness being a lack of sand layers to absorb shell detonations.  A siege of that short a duration means the garrison didn't have to suffer the ignominies of running short of food, water, ammunition and port in the mess.

     HOWEVER! a word you were surely expecting, over on the Eastern Front matters took a different term at the Austro-Hungarian fortress town of Przemysl.  Art!

     As with Liege, the town was surrounded by a ring of forts, and note the legend giving scale in PROUD IMPERIAL MILES.  

     Just to recap a bit, late in 1914 the Russians had successfully occupied Lwow/Lvvo/Lviv/Lemberg <delete where necessary> and then advanced on Przemysl, pushing the Austro-Hungarians back to the Carpathian Mountains.  Thus began the first siege, as of 28th September 1914.

     What was different about this one as compared to that of Liege?  Well, it went on for a lot longer, the defenders were better prepared, and the besiegers were - ah - how can I put it? Russians.  To exemplify, after the town and forts were surrounded - 'invested' in siege parlance - the Ruffian general in charge ordered a frontal assault that went on for days, achieved nothing and resulted in 40,000 casualties.  Ooops.  Art!

     It has to be a painting as the Russians don't seem to have taken copious photographs of their repulse.  How very odd.

     ANYWAY AGAIN one reason this headlong bashing failed is because the Hapsburg commander <takes deep breath> General Hermann Kusmanek von Burgneustadten had taken 20th century precautions, having rapidly established networks of protective trenches and barbed-wiring them to the value of 600 miles.  To have that much barbed wire in stock presupposes intelligent foresight, which is unusual at this stage of the conflict.  Art!

     Given the ebb and flow of warfare at this point, the Hapsburg armies came back in October and raised the siege, Hoorah! a loud reply.  Then they got pushed back again and the siege began again as of November, and in earnest this time, no suicidal frontal assaults.  The Russian strategy was to starve the garrison out and bombard them ceaselessly whilst doing so.  

 There were a couple of aerial innovations during the siege, notably the Ruffians being innovators in the field of tactical bombing in December 1914.  Art!

    How splendid to know that your siege is making history!  To counter the siege the garrison also used aircraft to send out mail, as well as sending mail in balloons when the wind was right, and pigeon post before the garrison got too hungry.

Art!

     Not so much 'Europe after the rain' but 'Przemysl after the siege', as it got a right shoeing for months, between the shelling and bombing.  Numerous Hapsburg attempts to reach the garrison failed until Conrad* von Hotzendorff, the Hapsburg's biggest wig of bigwigs, informed von Burgneustadten in late February that there wouldn't be any more attempts to raise the siege.  Ooops.

     The garrison surrendered on 9th March 1915 after 113 days, yielding up 117,000 troops and 700 guns, in what was the high-water mark of the Ruffian war effort, especially as the unsuccessful Hapsburg attempts to raise the siege had been far more costly than the siege itself - up to 800,000 Austro-Hungarian troops were un-alived or taken prisoner, much to the discomfiture of Conrad** von Hotzendorff.  Art!

"Fixer-upper for sale.  One previous owner."

     Perhaps the greatest blow of all was to Hapsburg morale, which saw their prized fortress overrun by the Rus.  Nor were the Teutons impressed with the martial valour and capacity of their ally.

More Ungentle Shoeing

This one is courtesy David Pakman on Youtube, from 10th August 2026.  You see?  You see how painstakingly I maintain my records? and also why I will never be allowed to enter South Canada under the present administration.  Art!

     The lights are on, barely, yet there's  nobody home.  By this point Fat Caligula is now having trouble getting in and out of his golf carts, and the purple wimwams have spread up his arm.  He's rotting apart from the inside out, which is probably why he ascends and descends stairs so gingerly; a sudden fall would cause him to split in half.

Back To Bedlam

Since it has come up in my news feed, I am going to address the share value of the Trump Media & Technology Group. which has gone unreported here for many months.  Art!

     TMTG posted a loss of $238 million in Q2 of 2026, which is not very good, in case you were wondering.  You may, sweet summer child that you are, wonder if this total is an improvement on Q2 2025.  Look at the graph to determine that the answer is 'No'.  In fact the losses in Q2 of 2025 were only (!) $24 million.  Ooops.

     Art!

     'Twould appear that the reason Trump's media holdings made such an enormous loss was because they were indulging in both Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, more scambles that, as an investment strategy, resemble the image above.  Art!

An echo chamber

     One thing about 'Truth Social', the sole company asset, is that the users of this social media platform are all fanatical Trump cultees, whom agree fervently with everything he says and does.  Thus is created the 'echo chamber' phenomenon, where people don't bother to stay as there's no challenge or difference in posts.  Art!

Thank you  AI Art Generator.

     So, the visitors at TS have plummeted over the past year, from 436,000 in July last year in total, to 261,000 in July this year.  Typically, Twitter receives 3.3 billion hits per month on average, or over twelve thousand times Donnie Dorko's traffic.  

    You may be holding out hope for the company's profits to transform this doomy financial picture.  'Fraid not.  They only came to $1.17 million to date.  Sorry!

Back To Bruce

Pennington, that is, the current focus of our looking at his portfolio on 'Sci-Fi Art' over on Youtube.  Art!

     This does remind Conrad of another cover, one of the 'Lucky Starr' juveniles from Asimov, let me just check -  Art!

     Perhaps thematically similar, if not alike.  Hmmmm.  Next!

     O it's that band again! the one with 'Blood' in the title that I can't recall totally and cannot be bothered to look up, either.  Tut tut publishing house!  Art!

      O dear me, AGAIN!  Don't these people realise that Bruce needs to pay the mortgage, buy in his groceries, fuel the car and get more paints?  The utter cads and bounders!

     THIS IS INSUPPORTABLE!  DOG BUNS BRUCE I AM GOING TO BE USING THE REMOTE NUCLEAR DETONATOR THANKS TO THIS!

     <short pause for blood pressure to subside>

     I've checked ahead for the next image and it's a different one, huzzah!

Another What On Earth Moment

According to all the pundits and everyone on social media, This Sceptred Isle is undergoing a drought thanks to extreme heat conditions, and I can indeed confirm that I'm guzzling half a gallon of water, not to mention tea and carbonated swill.  So - WHY?  Art!

Finally -

Bracing for the eclipse later tonight - this being typed on Wednesday afternoon despite what day you're reading it.

*  Excellent name!

**  Still an estimable name!