<Stony-Faced Glare>
No! I am not gainfully employed in the catering & hospitality industry, and would not care to be, either, given the horror stories I have read about it on Youtube Reddit accounts. Usually South Canadian ones, since managers over there seem to acquire the human rights attitude of Genghis Khan as regards their staff, and believe themselves to be the heir to the throne and the successor to Poutine. Which would be ironic if we were talking about a Tim Hortons, because they're present in Canuckistan and might very well serve it. Art!
He's had his chips!
"You have to do what I say 'cos I've got a degree in Business Admin and left university two days ago,' is typical. Art!
No, he's just really, really big
What I refer to, of course - obviously! - are the responses my foolish human counterparts gave to my cunning fishing expedition this afternoon on our Teams forum. As we have long known here, CONRAD HATES ALL MUSICALS, and made no secret of this fact when communing with compatriots.
Inevitably, they couldn't resist chiming in with special pleading that this musical or that musical was deserving of mercy when I take over.
NO! NO MERCY!
The Catch-22 here is that Your Humble Scribe actively avoids putting himself in the way of musicals, so my knowledge of these horrid things is pretty minimal. Come the takeover I shall appoint a diligent minion to expunge them rather than sully my fingers learning what ghastly sonic sewage exists.
Thus I took careful notes of my colleagues' responses. O yes. First up was "Chicago", which El pleaded for. To no avail. I have no heart*. Not only that, it's a toss-up whether I allow the city to exist in future. After all, with the power of my starship invasion fleet, I could make Chica - go.
 |
| <loud harrumphing noises> |
Another, which caused me to feel faint, was "Rogers". This name has unfortunate smutty connotations this side of The Pond, which I shall avoid because we are still SFW. Art!
Yeah. Not only will this be banned, I think my Minister For Musical Mashing will track down everyone involved in this farrago and send them to the organ banks. Probably after a stint in the chlorine-trichloride factory.
Okay, time to go stir in the spinach. Back in a moment.
I think that's enough vicarious indulgence for those of you out there who enjoy musicals. Conrad is watching you.
The Desert Spies With Eyes On The Skies
'Spies' is perhaps a little too extreme and suggestive. However, you cannot deny that it rhymes. For Lo! we are back on the astronomical observatories of South Canada, and be warned, there are shedloads of them. Each state has a university and each university has an astronomy department, quite beside all the other ones established by other scientific institutions.
Thus we come to the aptly-named 'Very Large Array', based in New Mexico, and nowhere near any major urban area. Art!
From the air And the ground
There are 28 of these whacking big dishes, with one always out of the rotation for maintenance purposes. Thanks to being on rails, the dishes can be compacted together or strung far apart, for the purposes of adaptable baseline interferometry (not a phrase you ever expected to hear today). They are used to carry out research into what makes stellar bodies emit radio waves, black holes, dust accretion around planetless stars, and other astronomical stuff with long names. Art!
"Hein's Train"
Coolest of all is this unique locomotive, which is used to tow the telescopes into position when they need moving, and the puny humans in that cab give you an idea of how big these dishes are.
A Chilling Episode
No! Not the latest extract from "Tormentor", you bafunes. I refer to the BBC's photo competition for the best winter photograph of the winter that is just on it's way out. Art!
Courtesy Heartbeat
This is from Ambleside in Cumbria, and it looks both cold and damp. And also perhaps what it would look like if Earth were ever under attack from the Blobs. Their invasion here is pretty much a failure as all the ones that fall into the lake are gone in an instant and th
ANYWAY there you go, and if the fancy takes you it's possible to vote for these photographs.
NOW We Have "Tormentor"
As you ought to recall, we left Paula debating exactly why Luma was such an interesting case, interesting enough to pique skeptic Nige.
A
police officer; Detective Sergeant Oswald.
Nige came across the officer’s name when trawling the microfiche for
articles that mentioned McMahon, and discovered a particularly unpleasant
murder in the lecturer’s recent past.
He’d tried calling Oswald, who sounded cagey on the phone but agreed to
an off-the-record meeting in a pub. The
officer was convinced McMahon had something to do with the suicide of Eric
Miller in prison; before the two “accidentally” met, Miller was a stoic,
unrepentant and arrogant offender of long standing. After they met Miller began to hallucinate,
went mad and committed suicide. However,
“knowing” and “proving” were not the same.
Miller had no traces of toxins or drugs in his bloodstream when he died
and Oswald knew of no other way to drive a person to kill themselves.
Then there were the offenders on
the DTO Remedial Literacy group. One
went back to prison rather than stay in what his mates described as a “haunted
classroom”. McMahon didn’t have to
threaten or shout, they behaved in his class or suffered inexplicable
reprisals.
‘All that. Plus the way he behaves, as if it didn’t
matter one iota to him whether we found for or against in the tests.’
‘You really think there’s
something there?’ asked Paula, more surprised by the minute. If the evidence could convince her skeptical
colleague –
‘Whoops! Talk of the devil, here he comes.’
Ho ho how hilariously ironic, Conrad. With wit like that you'll go far. All the way to the corner shop.
Having Some Pun
We've not had a painting by that master of Western art, Charles Schreyvogel, for quite a while. Conrad did a bit of Google searching and found this one. Art!
"I can't bear it!" bleated Dobbin.
No, that's not a pig in a fur coat, it's a brown bear, and since it's not turning tail and running away, everyone involved is in for a bad time**. "Quit horsing around" the trooper on foot is saying. "Fur Heaven's sake!" replies his compatriot. "O for an escape claws,' mutters the bear.
There will be a proper title for this picture, I just can't be bothered to look it up.
Finally -
Payday in less than five hours, hooray. Conrad hasn't bought a book in a couple of months, if longer, despite getting rid of two very large volumes back in January, so we may be hovering over Turner and Donovan's latest catalogue, or even splurging on a copy of The Expanse's very last volume. Then, too, I have commissioned a painting by Shelli - she of the cello - and now that she has wilfully turned her back on being a wage slave, she can devote time to it. The logistics of how I get hold of it shall be interesting.
She is big on unicorns***
* Only a fusion-powered pumping unit
** Made even worse by these puns.
*** Conrad is, too. They're delicious.
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