The Devil Is In The Details

Meaning That You Need To Parse Long Documents Before Spending Money

Especially anything to do with the Trump Crime Family.  There's a lot of commentary flying around at present about the 'Trump Mobile Phone', which looks as gaudy and tasteless as you'd expect anything originating from Don Snoreleone.  Art!

     590,000 of the Maga cult faithful shelled out $100 to pre-order these and waited for delivery.  And waited.  And waited.  Deadlines came and went for over a year, and outside observers pointed and laughed, because in the terms of the pre-order contract which these bafunes signed, they were told 'NO refunds'. 

     Oooops.  As of Wednesday there is a claim on the official Twitter website that they are now being shipped, except Comments have been turned off, implying that the admins are worried about people asking for tracking and delivery data before shelling out the other $399.  

     Nor is that all.  As you ought to know by now, Conrad detests the Devil's Digital Devices and has as little to do with them as possible, so I take this assertion as being gospel truth.  

The phones appears to be a reskinned T-Mobile REVVL 7 Pro 5, an out-of-production 2024 model phone that retails on Amazon for $126.

     It's also made in China, not South Canada.  ALWAYS READ THE SMALL PRINT!  Art?

The naked article bereft of tacky gold plate

     We shall see if they ever turn up.

     ANYWAY that part of the Intro was completely impromptu, as what I intended to begin with was another from 'Be Amazed's Youtube channel item 'Most Expensive Mistakes In All History'.  This one was about the Mars Climate Orbiter, the NASA mission to send a satellite to - you may be ahead of me here - orbit Mars and send back telemetry about the climate, way back in 1999.  Art!

MCO with puny humans for scale

     The spacecraft cost $380 million to construct and launch, and took 10 months to reach Mars, where it promptly burned up in the atmosphere and fell apart.

     Ooops.  BE points out that the budget would, adjusted for 2026, come to $500 million.

     What was the cause of this verrry expensive mistake?  O I thought you'd never ask!  Because the two design teams involved, Jet Propulsion Laboratories, and Lockheed Martin, used different measurement systems.  JPL were using metric Newton-second measurements, and LM were using PROUD IMPERIAL measurements of Pound-seconds.  Neither one realised that they were using two different systems that required conversion.  Art!

End result

     One feels they must have felt Led Zeppelin'd, you know, communication breakdown.

     Which brings us to another sorry tale of manglement and Malicious Compliance.  Art!

     Sorry to be technical.  Here we have a multi-kilovolt phase-3 backup generator, a very, very expensive piece of kit.  Stick a pin in this and we'll come back to it.

     The tale begins when a new management company took over the running of an industry associated with defence in South Canada, where the workforce remained.  They were mostly old-timers who were very experienced yet were thought of more as a workfarce by the new manglement, who were determined to Do Things Right.   Art!

Ignore the writing!  Ignore the writing!

     First, the Standard Operating Procedures were going to be re-written in order to comply with the business's model.  Thus I shall dub them Stupid Obtuse Plonkers.  The narrator of this tale I shall dub Grizzled Experienced Monkeywencher, hereafter GEM.

      SOP brought in technical writers to re-do the manuals concerning running the plant, but they had no experience of the plant and - defence contractor, remember? - they had no security clearance to visit it, as it would take at least nine months to get certification.

     Then came proving the pudding.  A test simulating a power outage and the critical back-up generator response was going to be run in one part of the plant operating with toxic, corrosive and flammable chemicals.  GEM and compatriots were brought in to follow the new SOP SOP.  Art!

     I exaggerate but slightly.  GEM and his fellow building engineers, with over 100 years of experience behind them, warned that the SOP SOP was missing inform-   

     'SOP'S SOPS ARE FINE!  RUN THE TEST!' was the intemperate response.

     The back-up generators made loud, expensive noises, there were electrical arcs that fortunately fried nobody, and Hay Pesto! two giant lumps of inert scrap metal that cost $1 million to replace.

     Ooops.

     SOP believed that, somehow, by telekinesis or black magic, GEM and compatriots had sabotaged the generators, so for the next test each building engineer had a manager looking over their shoulder to see they were following the SOP SOP to the letter.

     They did, to exactly the same result: $1 million dollars-worth of scrap metal.

     Manglement then swallowed their pride and asked/begged/pleaded tearfully <delete where applicable> what went wrong?

     A vital step had been missed in the SOP, a paragraph detailing that both generators had to be In Phase before going online.  GEM and compatriots had tried to warn about this and been silenced.  Art!

     The SOP was re-written and the third test went swimmingly.  I bet a few manglement heads went rolling after unnecessarily costing the business $2 million of entirely avoidable expense.   The devil is indeed in the details, especially when they're missing.

The Secret's Of Donold's Hair Helmet Revealed

Here's an hideously unflattering photo of DJ Tango outside in a stiff breeze, which I harvested from Twitter this morning.  Art!

     Clearly, the wind speed has exceeded the shear strength of his hairspray, and now you can see how bald he really is (sorry for the ghastly turkey neck wattles).  Doubtless he will call the person who took this photo a traitor, as well as the Tweeter who posted it, and especially Conrad for promoting it.

     He seems to be having trouble opening his eyes, which is odd, as the shadows indicate he had his back to the sun.  Tired, perhaps?  Posting 155 Truths until 5 a.m. will do that.

I Could Have Told You That

Your Humble Scribe was intrigued by a Youtube thumbnail from 'Johnny Johnson', who covers all sorts of military kit.  Art!

     This is the Dodge WC Weapons Carrier, which is a little confusing as 'WC' was Dodge production code for a truck produced in 1941, although it did indeed become a weapons carrier, also nicknamed the 'Beep' as a portmanteau of 'Big Jeep' since it massed 3/4 of a ton.  What you're looking at here is the artwork depicting one of them in action.  Art!

     JJ narrates that they were used in all theatres South Canada fought in, just in limited numbers as they weren't very effective.  The gun was only 37 mm, meaning it was obsolete as soon as it came into service, and could only fire through 180º, nor was the truck armoured in any way.  These faults mirror those of the British 'Portée' vehicles in North Africa, which were also unarmoured, could only fire through a limited arc and were a large, vulnerable target.  Art!

     Nobody consulted me about the WC WC.

Here's One From 10 Months Ago

     Ol' Vatnik Soup was playing a clip of Ruffian milblogger Maxim Kalashnikov, who was stating that the Ruffian summer offensive of 2025 would be it's last before economic collapse.  Well, the orcs spring offensive was a total failure with them losing more ground than they gained, and with losses averaging over 1,000 per day.  Overall the front lines have hardly moved and, of late the Kozaky medium-range drones are now actively hunting Ruffian vehicles - 200 kilometres behind the front lines.  The orcs cannot manage to accumulate troops for any kind of local attack, let alone an offensive, as any mass of soldiery is immediately spotted and FPV'd.

     Of course - obviously! - Conrad had to get his Comments in.  Art!

     Roll on July.  I bet DA has blocked me by then.

Finally -

I may have to venture to Sainsbo's on Saturday, supplies of Darjeeling Loose Leaf are getting dangerously low.

Foaming In The Coaming

Firstly, As Per Our Tradition

We need to define 'Coaming' as I'm pretty sure it's not a word you are familiar with.  It refers to the frame around an aircraft cockpit to keep out moisture, and if Art will put down his nuclear fuel rod for a second - 

     That's 'Coming Home Damaged' by Terence Cuneo as I thought a Lancaster Giant Flying Mallet would attract more traffic than a bit of coaming.  Still, let's get up the relevant picture.  Art!

     Now we are all far better-informed than we were five minutes ago.

     Let us now define 'Foam' as per my 'Collins Concise English Dictionary', which informs us that it is ' - a mass of small bubbles of gas formed on the surface of a liquid'.  

     What we're going to be discussing here is a verrry specific kind of foam.  Namely, the one used to fight fuel fires.  We covered this on BOOJUM! almost 2 years ago, in August 2024, when the Kozaky set the Ruffian Proletarsky refinery ablaze, which then burned for two weeks.  Art!

This homie got foamy

     You see, firefighting foam is designed to lie on the surface of any burning fuel and both cool and suffocate it, cutting off oxygen so it extinguishes the fire.  NO!  You cannot use water.  Di-hydrogen monoxide, to use the cod name, is heavier than fuel and would simply invert the fuel/water interface, thrusting the burning fuel atop into fresh air and battening the fire.  Herein the link -

BOOJUM!: Blight And Frothy

     ANYWAY today's Intro concerns a tale related by 3rd-party, about a newly-constructed aircraft hangar, the fire suppression system, and an idiot.  Art!

     An aircraft hangar.  They are typically enormous enclosed structures, built to keep delicate and hideously expensive aircraft safe and cosy.  What do modern aircraft hangars have?  Why, overhead suppression foam fire systems, of course - obviously!   

     So, the foreman and his crew were installing a foam fire suppression system in a newly-constructed aircraft hangar.  They were being overseen and instructed, not by the Owner, but by the Owner's Representative on-site, as some rich people are too busy to be where the action is.

     Here now follow some technical details, so neck your Red Bull and keep paying attention.  Art!

     Those dangly red bits are part of the hangar fire suppression system.  

     Stage One of the system was the diesel pump that would shove several hundred PROUD IMPERIAL gallons of water per minute into the hangar system.  This would impact six 500 gallon drums of foam reagent.  The reagent expanded 200 times it's original volume and poured down onto the hangar.

     That's how you suffocate a fire.  As beknownst to Master Installer of New Equipment, hereafter MINE.

     Whom else is present at this hangar?  Why, none other than Owner Representative of Entitlement and Stupidity, hereafter ORES.  Yes they were dense.  Art!

     What happens when one of these foam fire suppression systems reaches completion?  Why what Mythbusters might call 'Proof Of Viabliity', and I can see Jamie tweaking his moustache already.  Not, 'Does it work' but more 'It works thanks to this small-scale demonstration'.  

     As MINE instructed, thanks to years of experience, carrying out one of these tests used a fraction of the total reagents, producing perhaps 100 gallons of foam.  The entire hangar would be covered in foam to a depth of 10 PROUD IMPERIAL feet.  Art!

     MINE explicitly stated 'This is never a full test of the full capacity of the system'.  

     Guess who objected?  ORES.  Their argument was that the finished hangar would be housing many million dollars-worth of aircraft, so the system needed to be fully and completely tested.  They would not back down on this, so MINE had the foresight to write out a quick waiver document and have ORES sign it.  Art!

     This ought to have been a gigantic waving red flag the size of a football field.  Ought to.  For ORES presses on.

     MINE gives the signal and the suppression system kicks into action.  Within minutes the foam has reached and surpassed the 10' level and is, in fact, beginning to cover the control room windows where they are observing, 20' above ground level.  Art!

     Horrified, ORES demands that the test be halted.  This is easier said than done, as the minion who triggered the test now has to jog over to a completely different building to turn off the water.  Then, because of latency, water will still be entering the system, so they have to shut off each foam generator manually.

     By the time the system is shut down, the entire hangar is full of foam.  So, also, is the adjoining office suite, whose doors had not been secured against foam ingress.  

     Next day the owner turns up, breathing fire and brimstone, wanting to know why a full system flush had been run.  MINE simply gave them the form that ORES had completed and that was the last time anyone saw ORES on site.  MINE detailed that empying those 6 reagent drums cost $150,000.

     Oooops.

This Is Low Blow Hilarious

Conrad is not a fan of South Canadian late-night chat show programs, as they are all scripted by humble minions who don't get a fraction of the appreciation they ought to -

     ANYWAY Stephen Colbert had Andy Serkis on his program, and someone had the demented yet brilliant idea to have Andy read Donold Trump's social media posts in the character of Gollum.  Art!

     It killed me.  I couldn't watch without laughing and may still mis-key whilst writing this.  If King Piggy ever encounters this it's potential stroke material.

A Shout Out To 'Hazegrayart'

If you're not familiar, HGA is a CGI artist, whom takes fictional or speculative ideas and renders them via clips on Youtube.  We have already covered their 'Skyflash' adaptation from 'Thunderbirds', where they turn a model into the most frighteningly fast piece of kit in the sky.  Really, check it out.  Now, they have done a vlog on Project Orion.  Art!

     If you're paying attention then you will realise this is not an Apollo launch as the assembled vehicle is not remotely familiar.  Art!

     A 'chemical' launch, in that they use conventional rocket physics of combustible propellants.  Art!

     First stage separation.  The chemical booster is exhausted and falls away, releasing the nuclear propulsion mechanism for the Project Orion main assembly to go into operation.  Art!

     Which means detonating a small nuclear bomb behind the spacecraft, propelling it forwards thanks to kinetic energy.  Before you throw up your hands in horror, this system has been assessed as being practical since the Sixties, and was one of the motive power methods considered by Clarke and Kubrick on '2001'.  Art!

     Earth to Mars in 5 days.  With no reliance on Elong Tusk.

Doughy Slabcake

I am unsure if there is actually a recipe of that name, but thought I'd just pass around another terrible photograph of Donold Trump, because that's what I thought upon seeing it.  Art!

     He looks artificially inflated.  Too much yeast?  Not enough baking powder?  It looks like his head might come apart along the seams - what the heck was that horror film where  that happened?  Art!

     O yes, 'Van Helsing' from <shudders> 2004.  No, I couldn't get a shot of his head coming apart, you ghouls.  Use your imagination!

     O hang on a mo - Youtube to the rescue.  Art!

     You can see him giving an incoherent burbling rant on the White House lawn already, can't you?  With no correspondent daring to mention the whole Head Coming Apart thing.

Are You Hungary For More?

The new Magyar administration in Hungary has scared the Orbanazi holdovers so much that they are scrambling to get their assets out of Hungary before they can be confiscated or interned or seized.  To that end, Art!

     These are Orcban regime jets, which are now parking in Vienna, Austria, since if they try to park in Budapest, Hungary, they might be confiscated.

     Peter Magyar also further cemented his impeccable credentials by summoning the Ruffian ambassador to be severely chastised about drone-bombing Ukranian civilians.

     Methinks Putinpot is going to rue ever having lost the Weretoad's regime to democracy.  

Driveway To Desperation

First Of All

I would like to refer you to the word 'Swat', and if we prod Art into a state of semi-sentience with this epée hooked up to a car battery - 

     May I introduce you to one of Edgar Lear's more satirical poems.  You see, back in 1873 when he wrote 'The Ahkond of Swat', the British Raj was still in full play and the river Swat was still part of India.  The Ahkond was the ruler of this particular corner of Empire, and Ol' Ed went on at length pondering about his features and status, rather milking the Oriental Exoticism theme.  Art!

     For your information, the Swat is now in Pakistan.

     ANYWAY we're going off on a tangent here, and I wanted to get back to the verb 'Swat', which my 'Collins Concise English Dictionary' informs is of northern English dialect origin, coming from 'Squat'.  It means 'To strike or hit sharply', and - sorry?  It's a variety of fencing sword, if you must know.  Art!

     If we can resume?  We can?  Thank you so much! <Conrad looks loweringly at those who commented>.

     Remember that definition, because it's pretty apt.  Art!

     We now approach the meat of the matter.  Enter 'S.W.A.T.', which stands for 'Sheila Was A Termagant' sorry 'Special Weapons And Tactics', because the series focussed on the Los Angeles team who are more akin to soldiers than law enforcement.  When you realise that these people have access above and beyond the usual handguns, shotguns and automatic rifles of normal law enforcement, and in fact have tactical nuclear weapons in order sorry kit beyond the ken of common cops.  Art!

The HK UMP is one ugly gun

     S.W.A.T. do not do boring regular stuff like radar traffic stops, doing presentations in schools or wellness checks.  Their stock in trade is counter-terrorism, barricaded suspects or hostage rescue.  You know, cool shizzle.

     And so we come to another 'Ripe' Youtube channel annotation, where the central issue of contention is the wrought subject of -

     Driveway length.  

     No!  Not in the sense of two male neighbours competing to see who has the longer driveway, as men tend to get when suffering from too much testosterone.  This was the end result of  Affronted Driveway Owner, hereafter ADO, having a larger and longer driveway than his Entitled Neighbour Troublemaker, hereafter ENT*.   

     'Ripe' edited out the introduction of this tale, presumably since it included verifiable information that could have identified either party, which is likely to lead to libellous litigation.  Art!

     Let me display a few of the notes that ADO had left on their neighbour's car, which kept finding itself parked on his driveway.

"Sorry for the misunderstanding, this driveway is private property"

"Private property, please keep out"

"I must assume you are ignoring my notes"

     ENT would park her SUV behind ADO's modest Subaru, completely blocking it in and rendering him unable to drive his own car to work, making him late, having to resort to public transport or Uber.  Art!

     After being blocked for THREE DAYS running, ADO had enough and called a tow truck.  Predictably, ENT came storming out of her pit and tried to bully the tow truck driver into leaving her trespassing car alone, because she needed to use ADO's driveway since her own was criminally small and she'd sue him if he got her car towed - entirely predictable shizzle.

     Her car got towed.

     She tried to block ADO, who decoyed her away from in front of his car by rolling his window down, and as she came around the side he drove off.

     Now, a normal person would give up at this point.  ENT proved she was in fact a freaking nutjob.  Because - Art!

     ADO was sitting down to enjoy a coffee in mid-afternoon, when suddenly his local neighbourhood law enforcement S.W.A.T. team shotgunned his front door off it's hinges, poured into the house and demanded he release the child hostage.  At gunpoint.  At many, many gunpoints.

     You're probably ahead of me here.  ENT had rung the local S.W.A.T. office and shrieked that her offspring had been kidnapped and was being held captive by ADO next door.  This is colloquially known in South Canada as being 'Swatted' and is an extremely dangerous and stupid thing to do because we're not dealing with flies here, rather heavily-armed police looking for reasons to kill bad guys.    Art!

     Back at the station, ADO straightened things out whilst technicians traced the errant call back to ENT.

     Surprise!  SHE HAD DONE THIS BEFORE.  It just hadn't reached the level of S.W.A.T. previously.  Thus her offence became a felony - the big step up from a misdemeanour that you absolutely do not want in South Canada, as she ended up being sentenced to years in prison.

     I guess that solved her parking problem.

Credit Where It's Due

Rather than looking at Mordorvia or Ukraine, let us instead focus the actinic eye of BOOJUM! on Belarus, and it's dictator Lukashenko, whom is commonly known across social media as 'Potato Fuhrer'.  Because Belarus has nothing to export that is more sophisticated than the potato.  Art!

     The question has to be asked, whom is he going to war against?  He's successfully avoided managing to commit his country's armed forces alongside those of Botox Boris, which would have triggered a coup against him, as he was explicitly warned.  Conrad suspects he's still waiting to see who comes out on top, and will then stirringly declare that he was on their side all along.  Whilst keeping a plane loaded with gold bullion ready to depart at short notice.  Orcban The Weretoad being deposed has made allies of Botox Boris a lot more nervous.

Another Very, Very Expensive Mistake

Going back to 1980, and a horrendous drilling versus sub-surface geology and workings issue.   Yes, we are taking the details from a 'Be Amazed' vlog about terrible financial failures, and O boy is this one.  Art!

     You see, Texaco were drilling in Lake Peigneur in November of 1980, just with sketchy knowledge of where the subterranean Diamond Crystal salt mine was located.  In case you are unsure, they were located directly beneath the drilling rig's borehole thanks to not knowing what a left hand was, let alone what it was doing.  Art!

     The drill bit cut through substrate into the mine, meaning there was now a direct link between the lake and the mine, and the lake promptly emigrated into the mine.  Water, lower levels and all that.

     A tug, eleven barges, the drilling rig itself and a small local island ended up disappearing down the borehole.  Incredibly, nobody was killed, which means the good luck at another effed location is already goosed.  It cost the equivalent of $140 million today and may be the embodiment of 'Mine Mine All Mine'.

A Late Entry!

If you are unfamiliar, the winter season in Mordorvia brings along the - how can I put it? - season of sewer ruptures creating impromptu ice-sculptures, as they get gigantic fountains of fecal matter playing o'er the landscape.  All provided for free, as per instructions from Botox Boris about Ruffian infrastructure.  Art!

     Here is one such performing in the suburbs of Barad Duh.  Look on and weep O yeh Western artless goons! and commiserate that you cannot truly appreciate the smell, nor the delicate patter as half a million cubic metres of ordure spoil and spill from the skies.  That was me being poetic.

Are You Sitting Comfortably?

This used to be the broadcast line from 'Listen With Mother' on Radio One so long ago that many of you were not born.   I recast this trope as I put forward another factoid showing that Donold J Trump is rotting apart at the seams.  Art!

     Inevitably this will be blamed on Joe Biden.  Or Bill Clinton.  Or Harry S. Truman.  Whom served his country as an artillery officer in the First Unpleasantness, unlike Billy Bonespurs.

     Come at me Secret Service.

*  Tip of the hat to Ol' Tolky.