The Pipes

<Pauses To See If Blogger Is Behaving Today Or Not>
And it appears to have shaken off the dodgy formatting that dogged us yesteryon.  Apologies if you got less BOOJUM! than you were expecting; we do try hard to hit that Compositional Ton, you know.  
     But first!  Let us have some ridiculously large plant equipment, for no other reason than we can.  Art?

A "V Ditch Ripper" in action

     And now, a word to any newcomers amongst you.  I did whiz over my reasons for dubbing South Canada exactly that yesterday, so you'll need to read that blog if you want to know why.  Art?

I am not alone

     Other geographical wingnuttery we promulgate here:
"Teuton" - anything from or about Deutchland.
"M8s": the French, a bit of a nod to their dreampop band M83, and because we are such good mates.  A pun.
"Norks, the": if written with a sneer, North Korea.  If written with a salute, the Norwegians

Let's hear it for the Nork Marinenjaegercommandoen!

"Populous Dictatorship, the": Mainland China
"Sinister Union, the": The Soviets.  Apparently this title makes Tsar Putin very cross, which is why we're going to keep using it.
"Ruffians": Guess who?  Because they behaved disgracefully at some ballfoot events.  This, too, annoys Dimya*.
"Perfidous Albion" and "This Sceptred Isle":  Britain, where we are lucky to live.
     If I can think of a suitably punning or ironic nickname for your country, count on it getting used.
     Now for today's title: nothing to do with plumbing, it's one of the themes that Al and Jim are bruiting about on an episode of their podcast "We Have Ways ..." namely pipers, that is, men playing bagpipes.  Art?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpBw0oCO4C8

     There's a Youtube link.  Now, Art, a piper picture, please.

Thus

     Al mentioned how he generally hurries past anyone playing bagpipes, whereas Jim is partial to them, and Your Humble Scribe is a big fan.  I've had to pause the podcast at four minutes in or I'd never get this blog finished, or only finished by 22:37, so I shall guess that they'll bang on about Piper Bill Millin playing the pipes on D-Day, and the Teuton soldiers who deliberately avoided shooting someone they thought was clearly insane.  Art!

Bill at play
(Those are probably Highland troops)

     There we go, another Intro sorted.

Fear And LoaTHING
You're going to get the benefit of my wit and wisdom here, because I made notes last night, so SIT BACK DOWN!
     I came across a Youtube video that attempted to answer a question from 1982, namely "Why was 'The Thing' the "Most Hated Film Of All Time"?"
     Because film critics suck <insert NSFW noun here>?  They were falling over themselves back in the day to ladle derision and scorn and hot battery acid over TT, and "Film On Point" did a little analysis over why the drivelling scum critics were so hostile.
     One reason is that there had been another film featuring an alien stranded on planet Earth, released just before TT, and that film was "E.T.".  Art?

CAUTION! Touching laser-fingers can cause serious burns

     Conrad has seen it, once, and it left him pretty cold.  How and why people went gaga over what looks like something left in a butcher's offal bin has always been puzzling**; but people did, and this did not predispose them to view TT at all kindly.
     Then there was the lack of clumsy exposition, because the film crew and cast had all been working together during pre-production, getting to bond and develop personal relationships, thus not needing to spout reams of verbiage designed to update idiot viewers about "I AM GOING TO WALK ACROSS THE ROOM" "THERE YOU GO WALKING ACROSS THE ROOM" "I JUST WALKED ACROSS THE ROOM".  

They built that copter by hand, you know.

     Likewise, the viewer is deliberately denied information, because that makes things scarier and more tense, leading inexorably into paranoia and suspicion, just like the characters on screen.  That bit where the "dog" pads silently into someone's room, and all you see is their shadow on the wall?


     That's not one of the filmed cast, it's a complete stranger who was brought in for only that shot, so nobody could work out whom it might be.  That, critics, is being thorough.
     Then there was the theme of what seemed to be an intelligent disease with no possible cure, mirroring the advent of AIDS in the Eighties, and another kind of downer aspect to the film.  It wasn't until the Nineties and the arrival of videotapes that TT really came into it's own, and those same two-faced critics are all crowing what a "Masterpiece" it is  <insert another extremely NSFW noun here.  Two, in fact>.

"It's behind you!"

Reddit Revenge Retelling
Since I cannot have recourse to "Have Your Say" over at the BBC, I shall take my schadenfreude elsewhere.  In the case that stuck in my mind, an EMT-qualified technician took the first job he could get, as funds were low.  He had been promised £250 a week, but his first payslip revealed he'd only been paid £187 per week.  Naturally he went and protested to his manager, who proved to be a slippery, slimy slugworthy individual who said his pay was staying at that rate, and as for the £250 - did he get that in writing?

The business in question

     Our narrator bites his tongue - hard - and bides his time.  Weeks later, he gets an urgent call at home, stating that he needs to fly to an exploratory drilling site in Alaska.  His background detail for this is that any such site MUST have an EMT on-site at all times, and they can't proceed without an EMT.

An example

     "Sure," he acknowledges, repeating back the site location and what time he's due there, and how many weeks he'll be out there, etcetera.
     The next day, still at home, he gets a phone call from his manager, who is beyond furious.
     "Gosh, where on earth are you?" asked the manager, if a little less politely than I make out here.
     "At home," replied the narrator.     "Shouldn't you be out at the exploratory drill site as we agreed yesterday?" continued the manager, again rather more forcefully than I replicate.
     "I don't remember that," jibes our narrator.  "Did you get it in writing?" and he hangs up, then turns his phone off.     Ooops.  

Another example

     As the narrator explained, these drilling operations are extremely expensive to run, and this one was left standing idle for days until a new EMT could be gotten out to them, which cost the drilling team tens of thousands of pounds.  They didn't use the company again, and the narrator said it tanked 8 months later, having made unsuccessful legal noises at him.  Which, given what bumbletucks they had for management, isn't surprising.     Ain't schadenfreude a beautiful thing?

Finally -
I dug up a minor detail in "An Englishman At War" that was a real lightbulb moment, but we are way over the daily limit so I'll have to come back to it tomorrow.  Art?

A hint

*  When he's not secretly weeping.
**  Go on, it's just me, isn't it?