I Lied

I May Do This Frequently

Or I may not.  It's not like you're going to be able to tell, is it?  Unless you factcheck everything I type, which would be a full-time job in itself, so it wouldn't be feasible unless you're independently wealthy -

     ANYWAY I was incorrect about having finished my commentary on Roel's commentary on combat scenes in films depicting swords and armour.  You know, from 1,500 BC up to @1450 AD.  Art!

     Never heard of it myself.  What does Roel think? because he's been watching the thing, he ought to have an opinion.  Art!

     As Roel tellingly points out, the Roman empire (for we are dealing with that institution here) covered a vast area and diversity as shown above was perfectly possible.  Art!

     Er - no.  Sorry, but no.  Yes, the revolting slaves have done what Roel is constantly harping on about " - dig a ditch - and when you've done that, dig another ditch.  Dig many ditches!" but doing it on this scale is simply impossible.  You're talking about shifting hundreds if not thousands of tons of earth, by hand, unwitnessed by the opposition and carrying it off to dispose of elsewhere. Art!

     Then they bridge the ditch, because it looks cool, not because it's sensible.  And where did they get those bridges from?  They certainly weren't in the van of that enormous amorphous mob who were rushing at the camera mere seconds ago (enormous amorphous mobs is another pet peeve of Roel's and I'm surprised he didn't mention it here).  Why give your opposition a means of crossing the gigantic obstacle just created?  Roel was not impressed either, and awards them 1/10.

     Motley!  Let's see if you can cross the Magma Moat when it's full of liquid lava on a bridge made out of wicker and leather.  We have to keep ahead of those sinister steam locomotives, after all.

Corporate Darwin Awards

For those unaware, a corporate DA is one that removes the business entity from doing business, and the MySpace story is an interesting one.  MS was one of the first social media platforms, and was a rap-roaring success, which is like a rip-roaring success except more so.  Art!

     The site kicked off in 2003 and by 2005 was big and successful enough to be acquired by News International for £445 million, which is where the problems started.  Supposedly NI would be very hands-off, when in fact they got very handsy indeed, bringing in greed, politics, greed, lawyers, greed, accountants and greed again.  NI, in fact, saw MS as a cash-cow and began to inundate it with adverts in order to bring in revenue. They spent skip-fuls of money on new functionality in order to create revenue, rather than bothering to listen to their customers.  Customers voted with their feet and the site haemorrhaged users, who abandoned it for other, better social media platforms, which had begun to appear.  Art!

Losing 25 million users, over a third of your base, in a year, is not good.

     By 2011 News International had gotten fed up of MS and sold it to Time, for a reported £27 million - the details were deliberately kept vague as making a £418 million loss kind of made NI look like bottomwipes.  The site is still around as a small, niche platform with but a fraction of the users it had back in the day.

You Got "Tormentor" To Deal With Now

The usual caveat here: Conrad has censored out the swearing (I hope!) but these extracts concern what we will call 'adult themes' and are not suitable for those of a nervous disposition, who ought to seriously consider whether they want to go near a text with the title of 'Tormentor' in the first place.

‘Oh.’

Oh indeed, thought Louis, amused in a nasty way, chewing the inside of his lip.  They hadn’t done their homework, had they!

‘Oh.  Well, let’s move on, shall we?’

‘Yes, why don’t we move on!’ he agreed, in mock sincerity.

‘I’m sure you see how it is with us, Mister McMahon,’ began the rumpled detective.  ‘A single man, a very attractive teenaged girl, nobody else in the house, no witnesses.’

Louis stared at him without moving a muscle, not acknowledging the statement at all.  Long, painful seconds dragged by in silence until the detective spoke up again, sounding exasperated.

‘Well?’

‘Well what?’ replied Louis.

‘Do you see what we’re getting at?’ asked the detective, sounding slightly annoyed.  Louis rationalised this, calculating that a seasoned detective, a veteran of a thousand interviews, wouldn’t get nettled at anything minor.

‘No.’

‘Do you want us to spell it out in black and white!’ snapped the other detective.

‘I’d be immensely grateful.  Your tiptoeing around the subject is baffling.’  Louis wondered if their standard technique hadn’t been derailed by this point, with his indifference and refusal to elaborate.  Perhaps they would have moved onto a sympathetic approach, “nobody can blame you for fancying her, perhaps she even led you on, and then things go a little too far …” if he’d given them any opening at all.

‘I think you tried to make a pass at her, and that she rejected you.  So you stalked her down and attacked her, in revenge.  Then you had to silence her, stop her ruining your reputation, get rid of her testimony, didn’t you?’

‘Thinking’s obviously not your strong suit,’ replied Louis, glaring at the speaker.

‘Answer the question, please,’ snapped the rumpled man.  ‘And be serious, this is being taped.’

‘No I didn’t sexually assault her,’ growled Louis, feeling ill at the very prospect.  He pointed to a wedding band on the more aggressive detective’s finger.  ‘Get the hots for your own kids, do you?  Ever feel like a bit of one-on-one with them?’

The scandalised detective went red with anger before his colleague put a restraining hand on the man’s upper arm.

‘Well that’s how I’d feel about sex with Jennifer Hargreaves.  She was my surrogate daughter, for Christ’s sake!  Stupid *******.’

     I warned you!  Of course, things can get worse for Luma, and they do, although in a strictly temporal manner.

Let's Have A Much Nicer Subject

Historically-relevant runner-up photographs from the BBC's list of same.  Art!

Courtesy Mehmet Masum Suer

     This one is titled "Remains of the Kingdom of Commagene, Mount Nemrut, Turkey" and you might well wonder at the amount of snow present.  No other definitions or details provided, so let Your Humble Scribe do a little research -

     Aha.  It was a small kingdom whose status varied over the centuries as various powers claimed it, since it stood on the imperial borders of Roman and Persian provinces and satrapies.  Art!

     Mount Nemrut was a sacred site for the deposition of various artefacts, and I've come across one picture absent snow.  Art!

     There you go!  And say thanks to Mehmet, who climbed up a mountain after a snowstorm to get his shot.

Finally -

I don't have the time or inclination to do a full item on Codewords, not least because there are so, so many exampled of the compositors pushing the limits of fair play and decency - they cannot be British, the dirty curs.

     ANYWAY there they are again, using KIBOSH for the second time in a week.  Really!  What do they think they're playing at?  Obscure, obsolete and being repeated.  I dunno.  Time for the Remote Nuclear Detonator to get fired up, methinks.

One compositor less in the world