Anarchy In The South Canada

Conrad, As You Should Surely Know -

Is seriously addicted to Reddit Youtube channels, and spends hours every day reading them.  Some of the stories end up being repeated on BOOJUM! if they're amusing or insane enough.  The one I was poring over last night had the heading "What is your small-town WoE story?" except they use a ruder acronym than mine.  It confirms my suspicions that there's a strong streak of anarchy in most South Canadians, and it doesn't take a lot to bring it to the surface.  Art!

Flagstaff, Arizona

     This is proof of what one person posted about: Ruff's Guns And Liquor.  It is, as they said, exactly what it says on the tin, a shop that sold guns and liquor.  Can't see anything possibly going wrong there!  Off-licences are common enough here in This Sceptred Isle, gun shops are very un-common and I don't think anyone has ever considered combining the two.  The Chief Constable of Greater Manchester would probably think themselves the victim of a practical joke were "Booze And Two-Twos" ever to apply for a licence.  They also had a tale about Flagstaff's Pulliam Airport - Art!

     As you can see, literally carved out of the wilderness of rural Arizona, which is a lot greener than Conrad expected it t

     ANYWAY you can see the runway, which appealed to the local elk population because it retained heat, so they would arrive in the morning and lie down on it.  Pretty obviously an elk on the runway prevents aircraft from using it, as will many elks.  So the ground staff would go out and shout at the elks to make them move, and that worked for a while, until the elks got used to the noisy humans.  Then the ground staff resorted to firing a gun in the air - not at the elks, an elk carcass would need four people and a tow-truck to move it - until the elks got used to that, too.  Then came brute force, assaulting the elks to physically force them to move off.  Art!

Careful of the pointy prongs

     Eventually, after many years of elk-inflicted delays, one bright spark had the idea of putting up a fence, which immediately solved the problem.  Original Poster was sure they were an out-of-towner, none of the locals were that clever.  Art!

Note absence of elks

     Conrad is now musing on where the word 'whelk' comes from.

More Seedy Underbelly

Yes, back to that BBC webpage detailing the seamy side of life in Los Angeles, from the Thirties onwards.  Art!

     Lest you be unaware, that chap wearing a hat - all men wore hats and smoked in the Thirties - is a policeman, and the ne'erdowell he has in his clutches is clearly a miscreant, witness his blatant lack of either hat or cigarette.  Probably a Commie, too.  You could get away with that sort of thing in the Thirties whereas nowadays there'd be a grand jury invoked about two threads being pulled out of a cuff <bitter ranting screed redacted courtesy Mister Hand> and hang them high!  Art!

     That bemused looking gentleman is Micky Cohen, one of the mob bosses in LA, whose promotion to top dog upset a lot of other dogs, to the point that they tried to kill him.  The dishevelment above is due to there having been a bomb, not an earthquake.  Live by the sword, die by TNT.

The OVRO 40 Metre Telescope

Conrad apologises for using metric measurements, using Imperial ones would have been too confusing.  Yes, this is another South Canadian observatory, in California, where a lot of these facilities exist.  Art!

Sorry, no puny humans for scale

     This particular radio telescope is apparently involved in tracking down 'blazars', an astronomical term Conrad has never heard of until now.  Allow me to enlighten self ...

     Ah.  A bit like a galaxy-sized flamethrower, with the 'flame' travelling almost at the speed of light.  Sounds dangerous.  Best keep clear.

     Hmmmm we've had a lot of South Canadian-themed content so far, haven't we?  Let's change that to bucolic British charms with -

"Tormentor"

As you should surely recall, Luma has been summoned to replace Angela, who is being held hostage.

‘Hands in the air,’ warned an almost familiar voice.

Not mortal, anyway.  Over their bodies lay a shifting outline of vaporous filth, penetrating into and out of their mortal hosts, swirling like an intelligent fog.

               ‘Hello Sergeant Oswald.  Fancy meeting you here.’

               Bug-eyed, sweating madly, flushed and wielding a Smith and Wesson revolver, the policeman stared and glared at Louis, who kept on walking towards him, even speeding up a little.

               ‘McMahon!  How pleased I am to meet you.’

               ‘Who’s wearing a Sergeant Oswald suit, then?  You can’t be Morgan, he’s too much the coward to put himself at risk.’

‘Shut your ****** mouth, you mortal pustule!  Don’t dare call the name of Morgan in vain.’

‘Or else what?  You’ll kill me.  I take it that’s a given anyway.’

The reddened eyes of whatever was controlling Oswald narrowed.

‘Pleased as I was to finally meet you,  how much more pleased I am to kill you -’

               Before he could level the pistol, Louis spat at him.  The silver ball he’d cradled in his mouth for five minutes hit Oswald in the chest with all the effect of a medicine ball fired from a cannon, knocking the officer off his feet and discharging the pistol way off to one side with a terrific percussive crack.  Louis had expected merely a moment or two of stunned disorientation instead of such an over-reaction.

     Hmmmm how many of you saw that coming?  Go on, be honest.  And in the next paragraph we get to find out exactly what Luma ordered from Germany!  I know because I cheated and read ahead.  I can do that if I want, I am the author after all.

Finally -

You may skip this bit if Conrad blathering on about the 'Special' Military Operation isn't your cup of tea <pauses to drink from cup of tea> BUT I WILL KNOW AND THERE WILL BE CONSEQUENCES.

     So here we are on Day 60 of the SMO, with the Ruffians essentially bogged-down where they were on Day 4, with very little to show for enormous casualties.  Lavrov The Liar has been beating his chest about nuclear weapons, which is about all he and Tsar Poutine can manage, and you have to wonder about the mindset of a man who would willingly destroy the Northern Hemisphere for the sake of a muddy field in the Donbass.  Whether the Ruffian military would obey an order to break out the Big Bang Bombs is moot, as is how many of their ICBMs are actually fully functional.  Dimya and his spokespuppets seem to be acting like the schoolyard bully - aghast with horror that Ukraine actually had the gall to fight back and win.  Lavrov is now stating that this is a 'proxy war' - but hasn't been arrested, beaten and thrown in prison - and do you know what, he's exactly right.  Ukraine is being re-armed and re-equipped and re-trained with NATO weaponry.  One wonders what Dimya's advisers dared to tell him about what would happen if Thunder Run Kiev didn't work.  Art!

Probably incoherent grunting