Watch It
I've already Remote Nuclear Detonated five people who were harping on about a spelling mistake, so be advised my itchy button-pushing finger remains POISED.
NO, that's not a typo. It comes because I was reading an account of yet another 'mysterious disappearance' in the Bermuda Triangle, as reviewed by Larry Kusche, who actually went to the bother of digging up the full story (in his work "Bermuda Triangle, Mystery Solved"). He tells the tale of the 'Sno' Boy', a repurposed air-sea rescue craft, turned into a chartered fishing vessel. Art!
ART!
I do apologise - he got another cheesecake calendar of (the unquestionably sultry) Mara Corday as a Christmas present. He'll get Tazered later, I'm busy creating right now.
There are no pictures of the Sno' Boy, but that above is a South Canadian air-sea rescue boat, which will give you an idea of the dimensions and size of a 63 foot boat. It was purchased and converted by one Boyd Snow (so you can see where the name comes from, ingenious, hmmm?) with sufficient accommodation for seven people, including the crew.
When the boat set out from Kingston, Jamaica, the weather was good, yet she never returned <cue spooky music> from a journey of only 160 miles, almost as if she'd been ... abducted -
Pshaw, right.
Kingston
What the myth-makers leave out is that search planes and ships from the South Canadian Coastguard and Navy found lots of debris from the boat (including a tabletop with the boat's name upon it) and even spotted a body, but couldn't retrieve it.
It also had fifty five people aboard. Conrad has found a couple of websites that detail how to work out the safe carrying capacity of a boat, and this one should have had no more than FIFTEEN people aboard. Fifteen people weighing an average of 150 lbs each* comes to about a ton. I couldn't find anything listing how large a freight capacity the boat would have had, so we'll just double the allowance for people, thus making a total of three tons total. Art!
Just a reminder about size again
All those extra people increase the weight to over three and a half tons. O, and Lazz states that she was also carrying nineteen tons of ice. O, and ninety-nine 35 gallon drums of fuel on the deck, which comes to another twelve tons. Besides 50 rolls of bamboo. O, and sixty-six 35 gallon drums of water, which is another eight tons, again on deck. That brings it to 42 tons. The Coastguard described Sno' Boy as "tremendously overloaded", and definitely top-heavy given all the deck cargo. Even a slight swell would have capsized her and she would have had little freeboard (i.e. how high the hull is out of the water). All together now, "What can possibly go wrong?"
Okay, taking a short pause from creating words of wit, wisdom and wonkiness to pick up my Tazers and teach Art a lesson.
O Go On Then: The Sinisters And "The War Illustrated"
Because they complain so if not mentioned prominently. Art!
As of this issue's date, 25/12/1942, things at Stalingrad (now Volgagrad - do keep up!) had got a quantum level worse for the Teutons. The attempted relief attack to raise the siege had failed a couple of days earlier. Not only that, the main airbase at Tatsinskya had been over-run by the Red Army, with 72 transport aircraft being lost. This meant having to fly from much further away, limiting the amount of freight that could be carried into the city. Very much an Oooer Matron moment, and not in a good way.
There, Dimya, are you happy now? You can stop your snivelling and put that soggy hanky away.
Back To More Of "Tormentor"
Even a mundane bus ride or walk home can be a little adventure when you're being escorted by a spirit that only you can see or hear.
After leaving the bus at his stop on the main road,
Louis held a hand to his ear. He wanted
to talk to Jennifer, who had followed him off the bus.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked.
‘Pretending to talk to a mobile phone, so I can talk
to you without seeming like a raving nutter.’
‘That’s clever.
No wonder I came to you for lessons.’
To get to
‘Have you been in?’
‘No,’ replied the spirit, sadly. ‘They couldn’t see or hear me. It would only make me feel bad without having
any benefit.’
They had to pass the shrine of flowers and notes left
at the entrance to the fatal alley-way.
Louis noticed that the small and discreet card he’d made lay atop
everything else.
‘Did you - ’
‘Yes. Just to
show how much I appreciate it.’
There were no teenage lads hanging around ready to
cause trouble, nor any graffiti, nor thrown paint, outside his house today.
‘If I were there, they’d have suffered!’ hissed the
spirit.
Louis refrained from comment, aware that he was close
to the neighbours on either side and that nosey old bat across the road might
also be watching. Once inside, he threw
himself down on the settee and sighed hugely.
The spirit threw herself down alongside him and sighed, too.
‘So. How has
your morning been?’ asked Louis.
‘So-so,’ replied the spirit. ‘I’ve learned how to listen for you across
the void, and how to unsettle other people – like that man on the bus.’
Lots more to come as nobody has yet said "STOP! Just, please, STOP!" which is, of course - obviously! - exactly the same as saying "YES! Keep on with it! We cannot get enough!"
<looks out of window>
What a dirty day it is. The kind of day where you need to keep the lights on from dawn to dusk. Speaking of which -
Someone's Going To Get Fired As A New Year's Gift
Let me just present a picture that tells a story in eight words. Art!
Ooops!
(Please, no 'Santa' jokes)
Conrad read that 75,000 accounts were credited with money, which would come to £1733.33 per customer if they're all credited equally. The tricky bit is that the recipients are mostly rival banks, not Santander, which makes it much harder to claw back the money. The error is stated to have happened "when payments from 2,000 business accounts were made twice". Who managed to bodge that up, then? Don't they have any kind of audit procedure? If they do it's not fit for purpose.
Conrad used to have a Santander account. I'd better go see if anything surprising has landed.
Finally -
Your Humble Scribe is lazily munching his way through a looooong lunch, including a chicken ciabatta roll, thanks to Wonder Wifey declaring "This chicken's rank - I know, we'll give it to Rob!". Refuse nothing but blows. It smelt fine to me, anyway, and of course because there's 1) Food and 2) Meat involved, a certain small domesticated wolf has been gazing despondently at me.
And with that, Vulnavia, we are done.
* None of that metric drivel here! Imperial all the way!
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