If I Were To Say "EMP"

You'd Probably Roll Your Eyes -

"Uncle Bad Taste is whanging on about transient Electro-Magnetic Pulse again," would be the comment, though doubtless not as a Comment (you pikers!), which would be a pretty fair guess normally -

     - and here an aside, as yesterday's Metro Cryptic Crossword had, as a solution, an anagram of THERMONUCLEAR, which I solved immediately, of course - obviously! - and thus we have sufficient justification for a picture of a Big Bang Bomb doing it's thing.  Art!

Real estate re-arranged at a moment's notice

     HOWEVER you are wrong today, for we are in fact whanging on about a completely different item - one Empedocles, a name that popped up in my brain for no good reason.

     Who was he?  Why, none other than a Greek philosopher of the Classical era, and no, I've no idea why his name popped up in my head.  Art!

Empy looking Shempy

     Ol' Empy is responsible for considering that everything in the world was composed of earth, air, fire and water - no concept of ionised plasma in 450 BC - and were all governed by the mutually opposed forces of Love and Strife, which seems to echo the values of Zoroastrianism.  That's about all you're getting today, go look on Wiki as they have a lot more guff about him.  O - also a proponent of vegetarianism and a noted critic of animal sacrifice.  

     As for today's title?  Well, "Empedocles" is a bit of a mouthful when you're greeting your bestie every morning, so I confidently assert - and if you doubt me then come up with evidence - that his mates would call him "Emp" and if they were shouting at him from across the crowded agora, they'd yell "EMP!"

This sounds HIGHLY illegal but tremendous fun!

Prodigy Online Systems

Never ever abbreviated to "P.O.S." because that's a very rude acronym in South Canada.

     Who were they?  An internet service provider who appeared on the scene in 1990, like a flash of lightning across the skies, and who lasted just about as long.  They were one of the first such entities, and many, many people joined them because they were the only group in town, and you only paid a flat monthly fee - none of this 5p per minute guff!  Art!

     They took several spectacularly bad business decisions, for instance leasing phone lines with the expectation that customers wouldn't be on said lines for long - wrong! Customers could be on for 8 hours at a time, which ran up enormous losses.  They had an advert on each page, and customers were NOT allowed to criticise them - enter a team of censors, who were run ragged.  Eventually you were not allowed to even mention another user's name, and posts would be deleted if you happened to mention a phrase that was also another user's name.

     The final nail in their coffin was opening chat rooms with no charge for use; immediately even more people were online for even longer, and made the censor's eyes water with what they discussed.  With costs escalating, POS decided to charge people for posting e-mails - at which there were both mass protests and mass abandonment of the service, which limped along for a few years until completely tanking.  Art!

   Prodigy Online Services - as dead as the dodo.  Or, as The Doctor would add, gone the way of the Wirrn.

How To Go Round The Bend In One Easy Move

Or, back to more "Tormentor", because nobody's bothered to Comment or even comment, which means you all love it and want it to continue.

     CAUTION! This is scary spooky stuff - at least it ought to be, as that was my aim.  No complaining if you read and have bad dreams.

‘Bet you had a **** English teacher,’ he commented sourly.

              Moving into the kitchen, he got ready to make toast and a pot of tea.  Barely had he sat down when the front doorbell rang, which just had to be those bloody policemen coming back.

              Wrong.

              ‘Plainclothes CID?’ he hazarded a guess.

              The usual platitudes got exchanged and the two detectives edged into the hallway.

              ‘We’d like you to accompany us down to the station in order to make a formal statement, Mister McMahon.’

              ‘ “Helping with enquiries”?’ guessed Louis.  ‘So you don’t have enough evidence to charge me.  I see.’

              The CID men exchanged glances.

              ‘We could try this formally, sir, making it unpleasant and official all round.  This way you get the benefit of the doubt and a chance to put your case forward.’

              ‘My case.  I take it that this is a murder investigation?’

              Both detectives nodded solemnly.

              ‘Do I need a solicitor?  Or do you provide one?’

              The second man coughed in embarrassment.

              ‘Helping with enquiries is generally done without resort to counsel, sir.’

              Louis eyed both of them with dislike.  They returned his look with cool, professional detachment.

              ‘Alright.  Do you take me to the station or do I turn up under my own power?’

              They drove him, in an unmarked car.

The policemen turned on a recorder, giving their names, the date and time, before starting on Louis.

‘Can you state your name, for the record.’

‘Louis McMahon.’

‘And you can confirm that you are here without legal representation, in accordance with a request to help official police enquiries?’

Louis nodded before remembering to say “Yes”

‘Okay, Mister McMahon, can you please detail what you and Jennifer Hargreaves were doing on the evening of the seventeeth.’

‘What we’d been doing for the past two years.  Tutoring her in English Literature and Language.  She arrived at six and left at seven.  I always ring Angela before Jen leaves, and then – and then see her walk up to the end of the road.’

His voice caught unexpectedly in mid-sentence.

‘Do you need a drink?’ asked one detective.  Louis nodded, so the questions ceased until he got a polystyrene cup full of strong, milky tea.

     Okay, okay, not too haunting.  Just you wait!

The West Is The Best

Hey, don't quibble with me, it was Jim Morrison who said that, take it up with him if you dispute the assertion*.

     ANYWAY what I wanted to bring up here was another of Charles Marion Russell's epic paintings of the Old West, because they are evocative and because he created thousands of them, which means I can dip into his oeuvre for many years to come, as long as I'm not sued or abducted by MI5.  Art!

"A Doubtful Handshake"

     I'm guessing that's snow in the prairie grasses.  Note also the 'coup stick' hanging off the Native American's wrist; they used this in close combat to strike an opponent without actually harming them, which was deemed far more impressive and loaded with a whole lot more kudos that hacking them apart with a tomahawk.  Note also that the cowboy's not put his rifle away, even if it would be rather awkward in close-quarters fighting if the 'Doubtful' turned to 'Violent'.

Finally -

Conrad is slightly flabbergasted that the 18:56 409 bus turned up in Oldham Bus Station (Outrider) almost on time.  This is the first time this week a bus on the later schedule has a

     ANYWAY you really don't want to hear me whanging on about Worst Bus again, because they are pretty much low-hanging fruit when it comes to criticism.  Your Humble Scribe is having to think of a new, insulting aphorism about them, after the Work Of Fiction and the Ice Cube excoriations.  I'll get back to you on this.

Conrad is - not surprised.

*  Him being dead these 50 years might make this a little bothersome.