Manglement Meteorics

Today's Intro Features A Couple Of Made-Up Words

Ones not created by Conrad, even.  If you read as many Reddit stories on Youtube as Your Humble Scribe, you may have come across these: 'Manglement' meaning a management of IQ and morally-deficient idiots, frequently family members, and 'Stuporvisors', lower level flunkies who cannot walk and talk at the same time.  Today's Intro features the former.  Art!

     The Original Poster's director moved out and a new director (hereaafter 'BM') took over.  She wasn't actually very good at her job, but she was good at throwing mud at other staff and making it stick, which is how she had risen through the ranks.  OP had been tasked with creating a 30 minute presentation with vocals for the education of financial advisers in the business, which involved getting input from subject matter experts.  He completed a draft version and sent it to BM.

     She HATED it.  She replied with 20 pages of instructions on what to add to the presentation.  When OP tried to question this she doubled down and insisted in an e-mail trail.  End result: a presentation that was three hours long that went into excruciating and un-necessary detail.  Art!

You get the picture

     OP sent the horrendous mess to BM for approval, to loud silence.  A week later there was still no approval.  Then OP noticed that all e-mails from BM concerning this project had mysteriously vanished.  Not only his, but all those the subject matter experts had received, too, meaning Someone had deliberately gone into the mail server and selectively deleted them.  However, OP's IT contact was able to retrieve them, and OP wisely kept them on a flash drive.  Art!

No, Art.  No.

     Eventually upper management wanted to know why the presentation was a month late, and an executive called OP and BM into a Zoom meeting.  The Horrendous Mess was examined and execrated by BM, who said OP had misunderstood her instructions.  When he got his turn to speak she continually interrupted him, so much so that the executive interviewing them put her on mute.  OP then shared screens and showed all the deleted e-mails on his flash drive.  BM abruptly left the meeting and didn't return.  Art!

Apparently this is DC Comic's Zoom.  Thank you, Art.

     The fallout of this was that BM was fired on the spot.  So too was the IT Manager, whom she had been doing the naughty with, and whom she had gotten to try and cover her tracks.  Office Politics, hmmm?  OP took malicious delight in checking court records and finding out that both were in the process of being divorced by their respective spouses.

     Okay, that's enough Intro, I now have to Tazer Art into compliance.  I know, I know, it's a dirty job but someone's got to do it.  And our resident Neanderthal had been doing so well, too!

Art on one of his better days*

"The War Illustrated" Edition 152

I've fallen a couple of weeks behind in these seventy-nine year old updates as the cover date for this edition is April 16.  Art!  O stop whining and put a bit of salve on it.

     The Mareth Line was a series of fortifications constructed by the French to ensure that the Italians, present on the border in their Libyan colony, didn't get up to mischief.  Thus it was a natural refuge for the Axis, where they could hopefully fend off the Eighth Army for a while.  That monstrous piece of kit at bottom is a 4.5 inch gun.  Art!

     These pictures are from the west of Tunisia, where the First Army was fighting.  The first picture is of Teuton prisoners, some of whom look about fifteen, being marched off.  Below that you have a 'Bishop' self-propelled gun IT IS NOT A TANK; it's a 25 pounder artillery piece stuck on a tank chassis and given a very thin-walled turret to keep the flies out.  Next to that is the always-immaculate General Alexander, one of those men who have to look up 'Fear' in a dictionary to see what it is.  And at bottom the article coyly refuses to identify which regiments are manning the ubiquitous Bren Carriers, those tracked jeeps that the British army used in every conceivable role.

More Of "Tormentor"

Don't fret, there's only a couple of pages left.

CODA

              

The night of surprises hadn’t finished yet.  Walking back home in the dark meant Louis saw the pearly nimbus that glowed – that glowed from his house?

               ‘Did you invite friends to have a party?’ he asked.

               Yvonne hung back.

               ‘That’s not spirits, Louis.  I don’t know what it is.’

               ‘I need a cuppa and a sit down.  I don’t care who’s boosting the leccy bill, I’m going in.’

              

A stranger in a suit sat on the settee - make that a smug male model in an expensive Italian tailored suit.

               Not a spirit, realised Louis.  The man gave off an aura of raw power so strong you could imagine it coming off him in waves.  Meekly, Yvonne peeked round from behind him and gasped.

               ‘Ah, Louis.  And Yvonne.  Hello.’

               ‘Hello Mister - ?’

               ‘Call me Michael.’  He stood and gestured at the settee.  ‘Please, it’s your house and your furniture.’

               ‘Okay, it’s been a busy night and I want to try and get at least a couple of hours kip.  Who are you and what do you want?’ said Louis, dropping onto the cushions.

               ‘Louis!’ hissed Yvonne and elbowed him.

               ‘Blunt as ever, hey?  Consider me a messenger, Louis.  I represent the most senior management you can get.’

               The government? The UN? wondered the lecturer for a moment.  Yvonne pointed up for clarification.

     I think you can see where this is going, hmmmm?

Proof Positive

     This is Edna in Tandle Hill Park, on our long walk of the day.  I can tell you it took 12 minutes to reach here and we walked on for another 10 after that, where we reached a bench without any dogs around.  Predictably, because of the lovely weather the world and his wife were walking their woofers.

Finally -

A rather less bloodthirsty look at the SMO in Ukraine today.  You may have heard Ruffians - principally Lavvy The Liar - say 'It's all going according to plan, it's all going according to plan'.  Hmmm.  Hardly so.  One thing that's not happening is Nord Stream 2, so no oil or gas revenue for Dimya from that one.  'They can sell it to India and China instead', some pundits have parried.

     Hardly so.  It took years to build NS2 and it cost £20 billion, half of which was put up by Gazprom, none of which will be repaid.  How long would a pipeline to either China or India be?  How long would it take to construct?  Where would the Ruffians find the funding from?  A little number-crunching reveals that it cost £26 million per mile to construct.  The shortest distance from the Saint Petersburg terminal to China is 3,569 miles, meaning it would cost £92 billion just to get a pipeline to the Chinese border.  In fact the total would be lower as it's not being built underwater.  It took 4 years to build NS2; an overland pipe to China wouldn't be as technically difficult so they might manage it in, oooh, ten years or so.  Call me an optimist but I don't think Tsar Poutine has that long left.

*  Probably daydreaming of Mara Corday