O Schadenfreude

NOT To Be Confused With Beethoven's "Ode To Joy"
Which, in the original Teuton, is "Ode And Die Freude", and which is, as I like to put it, one of the most sublime bits of noise ever composed by a member of Hom. Sap.  Ludwig Van was quite the man.  He avoided some of the heavy lifting by using the words of Herr Schiller as the lyrics for OTJ, which I'll give him a pass for.  See also his 5th and 6th Symphonies, which I prefer over the 9th, which is where the OTJ comes in.

Not exactly cheerful, but the smiliest picture I could find of LVB

     Here an aside.  We here in This Sceptred Isle may well be hearing less of OTJ as it it the official anthem of the European Union - there was this thing called "Brexit" you may have heard a mention or two of ...
     Which is dangerously close to both Politics and Current Affairs, so we shall move on.
     I refer in the title to the unusually concise Teuton word that means "maliciously enjoying the misfortune of others", and O my! have I been indulging in Schadenfreudey this afternoon and early evening.

Michael Bentine where are you?

     I blame both Reddit and Youtube, for putting up horribly fascinating titles.  You may have read today's earlier post, which detailed the decline and fall of Schlitz, a South Canadian brewery that ended up utterly tanked thanks to declining quality.  That was suggested by an AskReddit post on Youtube.  There was another about Sears, and yet another about K-Mart, which I may come back to - these tales are probably familiar to our South Canadian brethren, not so much to the rest of the world.

Searing.
(The TEMPERATURES you disgustingly-minded lot)

     There was another long story up this afternoon, about a female college student working in a Seattle coffeeshop, where the manager turned up late in the day and went home early.  She, and the shop, were in trouble thanks to consistent shortfalls in stock.  Steve, the asshat middle-aged creep a fixture there for twenty years, who liked younger women, used to chastise his fellow employees at every turn, telling them that they couldn't hack a real job, they were snobs, they gave away too much free stuff, he was the reason Seattle businesses were booming, he was practically the manager -

Emphatically not the shop in question

     Our narrator then accidentally stumbles upon Steve unloading the daily delivery truck, and stealing a crate of the contents.  He would then phone his wife, who had been waiting nearby in her car, and she'd come over to drive off with the stolen stock.  She and Steve would then sell it at local sports events.  Our narrator got camera footage of this.
     Then, when the regional management came to her shop for a meeting, she put it on the public monitor screens, on a loop.
     Steve got six years in jail; his wife got a suspended sentence as they had two teenaged children.
     It's wicked, I know, but - I did a fist pump when Steve got his jail time.
     O schadenfreude!

Hey, this is almost smiley!

    Motley, we need to hang about in bars and score*.

Yes, But Who?
 It's one of Conrad's minor frustrations that memoirs have to be very cagey about whom they name when circumstances are dire.  In the field of military history, this usually means that an idiot officer is only ever called "The Major", or "Subaltern X".  Keith Douglas, writing of the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry in North Africa, used to refer to their OC as "Picadilly Jim" with a kind of fond dislike.  He was actually referring to Colonel Kellett, who was killed in action -

Sic

     But I digress.  I am referring here to Max Brooks "World War Z" and page 83 onwards, which features the recollections of T. Sean Collins.  TSC had been hired as martial muscle to defend a huge house (more like a complex) from zombies, by an un-named moneybags who was something in Hollywood.  Max then gives a pen portrait of the other celebrities and their entourages who come by invitation to this house, in order to sit out the end of the world in luxury.  Max describes a "little, rich, spoiled, tired-looking whore", and a "record mogul with the big ole diamond earrings", and a "political comedy guy", without ever naming names.
     Conrad's question, is:  Okay, Max.  Were you just creating anonymous and generic characters, or did you have particular people in mind here?
     I would guess that the LRSTLW to be Paris Hilton.  I'm equally sure Michael Bay is in there somewhere.

A Bay

     Oh - on one of those Youtube AskReddits Michael Bay is described as being a massive bottomhole, which seems about par for the course.

Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell
Or, if you prefer, and want to be formal, Manchester.
     Conrad has a loooong walk from where he gets off the bus in Go - Manchester to the office.  Since I shall be doing this tomorrow, and today is a Sunday, I can guarantee that there will be discarded beer cans, bottles, and puddles of vomit en route tomorrow.
     Sorry if that has created a word-picture you cannot unsee.
     Anyway, for ages there was a mural of Tony Wilson painted on an electricity substation or some such item, that I passed while walking.  Art?

"This is Manchester.  We do things differently here."
(A quote from the great man himself)

     It got replaced recently, and the replacement got replaced.  Art?

Er.  Yes.  Whatever.

     Frankly, I preferred Tony.

Finally -
There's a thread over on the Facebook Space Opera page about what they think will be the first kind of booze made in space, with a whole lot of informed opinion about what it might be.  The consensus seems to be vodka, as it can be made from potatoes, and outer space of the future will be awash (apologise if wrong metaphor) with spuds.
     Wellllllll Conrad hates to be the pin to your balloon, but I remember reading in "The Guns Of War" about how the Canuckistanian troops came across what they thought were tanker wagons of spirits deep into Germany in 1945.  There was some drunkenness.  It turns out that the stuff was a kind of booster for rocket engines.
     So the first kind of booze made in space might be siphoned out of a venturi, with a dash of ice shavings and orange juice.

CAUTION!  Ensure it is not hydrazine**.

*  MUSICAL PUN NOT LIFESTYLE RECOMMENDATION
**  As being dead can cause problems