Not To Be Confused With "The Washington Post"
If you don't know your high quality South Canadian newspapers, then let Conrad elucidate. The "New York Times" is one of them, usually abbreviated to "NYT", as is the "Washington Post", usually abbreviated to "WaPo".
Here an aside. Your Humble Scribe somehow managed to get unfettered access to a very long and detailed WaPo article about the Ruffian FSB and what an utter bodge of things it had made in Ukraine. Normally these things are hidden behind a pay firewall and you can only read the first paragraph before having to choose how much to pay for how long. Art!
Wow! I even managed to nick their image header. Annnnnnd the article is still up. Without a firewall.
Here an aside to the aside. It is possible to get around the blockers these sites put up, if you're fast enough on a keyboard. The instant the page loads you do Ctrl-A to select the whole page, then Ctrl-C to copy it, and then you dump the document on Word, where y
ANYWAY the WaPo did reach out to the FSB to get their side of the story, only nothing and nobody got back to them, probably out of sheer embarrassment. It seems they may have failed to realise how strongly Ukraine would resist, or - and this is more likely - they did not dare tell Tsar Poutine what a very bad idea his invasion was. The WaPo tried contacting a few highly-placed FSB officers, who again failed to respond. Not really surprising, if RT tried getting a quote from a CIA officer I doubt they'd get a chatty reply. Art!
The Lubianka, FSB's sinister lair
OF COURSE - obviously! - none of this has anything to do with my washington news. I was just setting the scene, if you like. You see, yesterday afternoon I put a load of washing into the machine, set it going and went back to my Sekrit Layr, only to be informed that the Dog Buns machine had broken down with an error code of "F 08". Yes, there were a good few Effs in the air after that. Art!
 |
| "Eff you, human!" |
Next worry was that the drum had filled with water, which needed to be checked with a torch - no signs of moisture and Hay Pesto the door wasn't locked either, so my dirty laundry got put back in the basket and Conrad now has the untrammelled joy of handwashing a load of underwear, socks and tee-shirts. On the plus side it's a nice bright breezy day so they can dry outside <moderately sad face>
By sheer coincidence I had been presented with the extended repair service letter from Domestic & General just a day before, by a terse Wonder Wifey, stating that it had better be cancelled smartish. Conrad, idle as ever, had not done so, and we now have an engineer attending next Wednesday <moderately happy face>.
Motley, bring me a great big stick, because we're going to beat a batch of laundry into submission!
Cross About Words
You remember that crossword puzzle in the Lord Peter Wimsey short story I was going on about? Google proved to be entirely useless, so I carefully arranged a couple of pieces of paper and looked at the solution for I.1 and it was -
"VIRGO"
Which I had already made a guess at. So I can count that as a win. Art!
That gives me the first letter of another five words, and I suspect I.1 Down might be either "VISTA" or "VERST", possibly the latter as it's an old Russian measurement of distance and the clue mentioned "Tundra".
Meanwhile In "The War Illustrated"
As ever, I need to remind you, gentle reader, that the pictures and articles and captions in the wartime publication are always out-of-date when published, both because of practical limits of the technology and also to ensure nothing useful got back to the enemy, Art!
No, these are not the Brylcreem Boys in action, these are the South Canadians, not sure what nickname to give them - the Action Jacks? - who paid a visit to the 'Rumanian' oil refineries at Ploesti, which is where most of the Teuton's oil supplies came from, and 177 B24 Liberators handily dropped 300 tons of bombs on the lot. Bear in mind that the target was in 'Rumania' and these birds flew in from Libya - a 2,400 mile round trip. What the article coyly avoid mentioning is the heavy losses the Action Jack's suffered - 55 planes lost and 300 aircrew killed.
Whilst On Matters Martial
I think it's time to bash out another extract from "The Sea Of Sand", where The Doctor is very discreetly poking around the archaeological dig to see if any of the diggers have survived.
"Albert! Did your companions survive?"
"No - Professor Borguebus. A big black glass - black - something evil. It - it killed him. Shrivelled him to nothing."
Too late for one of the team. The Doctor lit up the interior of the refuge with his sonic screwdriver, casting a wan green light over Albert. Over in a corner Templeman lurked, looking alternately sullen and dangerous. A camping stove lay on it's side between them, lying abandoned alongside. You couldn't really continue brewing tea in here.
"We hid in here when it killed Bourgebus," said the Professor.
"Are they some kind of Axis secret weapon?" whispered Albert.
"No. They were here long before the Axis arose, Albert. I believe they were left here by the creatures who built this complex."
Templeman pounced on this use of language.
" 'Creatures'? What do you mean? And this religious complex has been here for five thousand years, Doctor Smith. That means those machines could not have been left here. Not by anyone, least of all 'creatures' ."
The Time Lord looked witheringly at Templeman.
"Lieutenant Llewellyn described how you suffered losses of workers here the last time. They encountered these machines, Professor."
"Nonsense!" blustered Templeman, not sounding quite as convinced of his own correctness now. "Rogues ran off with temple artefacts, that's all."
"A species of guard device, is my conjecture" mused The Doctor, thinking aloud. "Triggered by proximity. Any traveller for several millennia in the past who ventured too closely to Makin Al-Jinni was detected and killed by these machines, including your site workers."
You Couldn't Make This Up
People would mock and jeer, generally thinking you were being silly.
Okay, so in South Canada when the Wizard Lizard Gizzards and the Ice Cream Bandits campaign politically for elections, they spend immense amounts of money, millions and millions of $$$. Against our normal convention, I am going to leave these figures in dollars.
So, the WLG proudly announced earlier this year that they had raised $173 million. Cheers all round, throw hats in the air, fire up a cheroot.
Now, however, they've just had to cancel $10 millions-worth of advertising, because there's only $28 million left in their coffers. The breakdown so far is as follows:
$23 million - advertising
$21 million - texts
$12 million - credit cards
$13 million - consultants
$9 million - debt repayments
$8 million - mailing lists.
This comes to $86 million, so fuming WLG senators are demanding to know what became of the other $59 million?
The chap who's in charge of the committee that oversees these expenditures is one Rick Scott. This is the same chap who was party to one of the largest medical frauds in South Canadian history, over a billion dollars-worth of fraud. Fox, meet chicken coop. Art!
Conrad forsees more coming out about this case. Off to get popcorn!
And with that, Vulnavia, we are done
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