Shall We Wallow?

After Being All Arty -
 - a roll in some sleaziness will demonstrate what widely varying marks BOOJUM! can hit.  Don't worry, there will be no nakedness nor anything NSFW, as we cherish our Anyone Can Read Us (Even If They May Not Understand Us) Policy.

For example, BOOJUM!'s "Sharks Are Our Friends!" policy
(Look, this one is smiling!)

     First of all, you may remember me mentioning the repulsive schemer Bill Gouldd, pyramid scammer of "Equinox International".  Bill was banned by law from ever even thinking about running a pyramid scheme again, and so to bring in the bucks he resorted to selling motivational gubbins at hotel presentations.  You may wonder why he didn't knuckle under and get an actual, real, proper job but it seems these white-collar criminals are either too set in their ways or lack transferrable skills.  "Hey I'm great at conning people out of their money!" is not what the interviewer at Burgerking wants to hear.

However, there are some "call centres" who'd be interested ...

     I don't think Bill is doing so well; as I wrote a few weeks ago, neither of his Facebook pages have been updated in over two-and-a-half years, and if he was raking in the coin you'd better believe he'd be boasting about it on social media.
     Anyway, that's all rather by-the-by, because I wanted to look at another bunch of scamming bokebags called "Fortune Hi-Tec Marketing.  Art?

Heh.

     
     FHTM liked to boast about all the big-name companies that it supposedly did business with - though only ever as a third party contractor and taking care to ensure these same big names didn't find out they were being bruited about by FHTM.  They supposedly sold various retail tat (with ridiculously low commissions for the sellers) but where they really made money was in having their retailers recruit other retailers; you got a bonus for recruiting another person, so guess what their 'distributors' did, rather than flog cheap tat for next to no reward?  Bingo!  You got it - and the pyramid scam begins.

Although this neglects the distinctly cult-like aspects of same

     The wheels began to come off in 2010, when the Montana SSC investigated what FHTM were up to and how they worked.  This investigation cost FHTM £650,000 and obliged them to give out actual figures about their 'workforce'.  30% of these people made no money at all out of the scheme.  Another 35% made less than £60 per month, before deducting costs and overheads, which thus averages at a guess at £1 per day, or a pay rate of 12.5 pence per hour.  Not looking too rosy, is it, when 65% of your workforce either get nothing or next to nothing?  The next 30% of employees made less than £160 per month, which we will again halve to take into account of costs, thus £80 per month or £2.66 per day, or the princely sum of 33 pence per hour.  That's 95% of your workforce accounted for.  Sobering stuff!

"You, too, can make very little money!"

     It's not over yet, but I think we've trawled along the ocean bottom of life enough for one day.  More to come tomorrow!
     Right, motley, we're going to play Jenga, and to make it more interesting, we're going to be using gold ingots.  Er - put these rubber gloves on before you touch them and make sure the doors are locked and the curtains drawn.



Back To Being Hearty, Arty And Farty!
Actually ignore that last (it's the tablets, I tell you!).  For lo, we are back to the BBC's list of 100 novels that helped to shape our world.  With the proviso that they have to be in English, which is perfectly fair as it is the Mother Tongue*, and written within the last 300 years, which means that piker the Barf of Avon won't get a look in.

Burn in the depths of Hades, Bill!  Burn!  BURN!

     <ahem>
     Yes well, after allowing my blood pressure to reset, I shall continue.  Today we are looking at "Life, Death And Other Worlds" which Your Humble Scribe feels is a bit of a catch-all title.  Begin!

A Game of Thrones – George R. R. Martin

Astonishing the Gods – Ben Okri

Dune – Frank Herbert

Frankenstein – Mary Shelley

Gilead – Marilynne Robinson

The Chronicles of Narnia – C. S. Lewis

The Discworld Series – Terry Pratchett

The Earthsea Trilogy – Ursula K. Le Guin

The Sandman Series – Neil Gaiman

The Road – Cormac McCarthy

     Hmmm.  It didn't carry the format.  Better throw some colour in there to stop people getting bored.  You will have worked out by now that the ones in green are the ones I've seen, except not all the "Discworld" stuff.

The only valid cover there is
(And, as a trilogy, it seems to number about 47 works)

     I would go back and re-read this one.  All the others, in fact, bar "The Road", which I hated - "two tramps mucking about in a rubbish dump", as I describe it.  Anyway, what I like about "Dune" is a very thoroughly developed world with a possible ecology, which the author clearly took pains to develop.  Plus, it made for an awesome real-time strategy game back in the day, which is something nobody will ever be able to say about "The Road".
     Well, that's enough high literary concepts for one day.  Can't have you falling over in a faint, can we**?
"ESCHEW"
This is another crossword answer, with the clue being "Shun".  Conrad, as ever curious about the origins of words, wondered where it came from, and the far distant answer is "Old German".  It is related to the Teuton "Schuen" which means "To shun", and which became another Old French word, "Eschiver".

So nothing to do with this disgusting oaf.

     It's both a bit poetic and obsolete, and strikes Conrad as being the sort of word that lawyers use when they're being sly and dishonest <insert lawyer joke here>.
Finally -
We're actually up to count; I just wanted to add in another item, because we've been weighted pretty heavily towards the Intro.  Not sure what, however. 
     Let us fall back on that staunch safeguard, TANK!  Art?

Hmmmm.

     Conrad is pretty sure this is a captured Polish tankette, dressed in the colours of it's new Teuton owners; it's always nice to absolutely thrash captured kit as you don't need to worry about breaking it, but you do have to be careful that your mates know it's really you, hence the implausibly large cross on the side - which, mind you, makes a splendid aiming point ...



*  And if not IT OUGHT TO BE.  Yes, Populous Dictatorship, I'm looking at you.
**  Well, we could, but don't count on me to catch you.