From Kraken To Squib

OR From Kraken To Squid

If that's funnier.  Conrad has been seeing the word 'subpoena' bandied about on social media for ages, usually in connection with Mr. Donald Trump and those associated with him, and just accepted it as part of the media background.

     So what is it?

     The word itself translates from the Latin <hack spit> as 'Under penalty', meaning that the person served with a subpoena is legally required to attend a court on a certain date.  Art!

A Kraken awakened.  Must have got our of bed on the grumpy side.

     What's all this about Krakens?  O I thought you'd never ask!  If you remember after Mr. Donald Trump lost the election he had lawyers raising case after case protesting this, to the total of sixty.  Of those doing the raising was one Sidney Powell, who had wicked parents.  Art!

El Sid

     "We are going to raise the Kraken!" she vowed, making wild statements in public, and then doing nothing of the sort and avoiding any mention of fraud in court, because perjury; this is the squib bit.  Or squid, if it's funnier.  In fact she got so bonkers that she only found out she'd been fired when the news reported it.

     I know, I know, what does this have to do with subpoenas?  PATIENCE!

     Dominion Voting Systems got fed up with her fibs and decided to sue her for defamation for about £1 billion, which is not a typo - £1,000,000,000.  In order to proceed, Ol' Sid had to be served with the witness summons document, which is done via a third party who has to physically present them to those summoned.

     Ol' Sid demonstrated her innocence, conscience and faith in legal outcomes by running away.  Art!

For an old gel she could put on a burst of speed

     Her logic was that, if Dominion couldn't find her, then she couldn't be served with the summons document and thus wouldn't have to appear in court and nobody could charge her, everybody lived happily ever after.

     Ah - no.

     Having got the bit between their teeth, Dominion weren't giving up.  They hired a private detective agency to track her down.  She got served.  She may also get disbarred for all her frivolous legal cases.  O and - Art?

What's wrong with this picture?

     No Damp Squib Sid!  She was supposed to turn up for a Special Grand Jury and testify.  I wonder that the penalty for non-compliance with a subpoena is?

The Biter Bit

Conrad subscribes to the Youtube channel of Suchomimus, who, before the war in Ukraine broke out, used to do occasional vlogs about dinosaur fossils.  He's an expat from Nottingham who's been working in Taiwan for the past 8 years, and he has a gift for understatement.  One of his more recent vlogs was about a Ruffian mine-clearing robot, which looks as cool as it sounds.  Art!

Uran-6 with puny humans for scale

     The idea is that the Uran will chug along and detonate any mines present with flails (or a roller) as invented by Perfidious Albion during the Second Unpleasantness.  Conrad reckons they cost about $1 million each and Ol' Such reckoned the Ruffians had eight of them.

     Designed by computers, built by robots - but operated by Ruffians.  What could possibly go wrong?  Art!

     It could get blown up on a mine.  The living depiction of irony.  We would never have known if an anonymous Ruffian grunt hadn't taken this picture.  Thanks, Sergei.  Obviously the phrase 'Operational Security' is simply word-salad to you.

Pizza Delivery From Hades

If you recall, OP had quit his awful job under his equally awful boss, whom I had dubbed 'Shouty Gobs****'.  Because OP had proof of being fired, namely a text on his phone, he was thus entitled to claim unemployment benefit from SG FOR SIX MONTHS.  Doubtless this would send SG into a frothing rage when he realised this when the paperwork arrived.  Art!

     When OP swung by on Monday to hand his shirts back, the pizza shop was closed, with a hand-written sign saying "Closed due to lack of staff".  He left the shirts in a nearby skip ("Dumpster to you South Canadians out there).

     On Thursday his ex-boss shows up at his door demanding that he come back in for Friday, their busiest day.  OP refuses.  Shouty goes into a rant that he's spending so much on Doordash to deliver his pizzas that he's going to go bust AND IT'S ALL OP'S FAULT.  Art!

     OP tells him to get stuffed, then closes the door.  Shouty keeps on shouting about how he's going to sue for job abandonment - an act that does not exist - and how his kids are going to starve and be homeless.  Eventually he stalks off toward his car, which encourages OP to be magnificently petty, as they stick their head out of the door and shout "Your pizza ****s and you ***k if you think one driver can save your awful business.  I hope you do go bankrupt so I can laugh at you panhandling on a street corner in a month, you cheap bottomhole".

     Predictably this sends Shouty into a paroxysm of rage and they come back to bash on the door and scream obscenities, which prompts a neighbour to call the cops.  Three squad cars turn up and Shouty, a shrunken man, has to explain what he was doing and why.

     It turns out that Shouty had been at other ex-workers homes trying to scream and insult them back to work.  OP and these people are now going to hire an attorney and see how they can legally drop SG in the excrement.  Tee hee!

Shouty a month later

"The Sea Of Sand"

As you recall, Albert had driven back to the excavations to warn the Doctor that Italians now held the depot at Mersa Martuba.

"So they can't come through from the other end?" asked Albert, seemingly grasping the concept of matter-transmission with impressive speed.

     "Not yet.  The damage is minor and repairable.  You were able to get in here undetected because so many of them are working on repairs.  We have gained a breathing space, nothing more."

     They didn't dare use light in the stuffy little den, so Albert's dejection only came across in his tone.

     "Oh.  That's not much help, is it?"

     "Chin up, old chap," murmured the Doctor encouragingly.  "Time is on our side, not theirs.  I've viewed their home-world, you see."

     The concept of motile holographic displays, the location of Delta Pavonis and the bio-vore lifestyle took creative explanation to make sense to Albert.  His grasp of the trans-mat enabled him to ask another intelligent question.

     "So you can send anything at all by trans-mat?"

     "Well, broadly speaking, Albert.   Inorganic matter is easier, and smaller objects obviously require less power and computer processing -"

     "No, no, that's not - what I meant was how can they put a trans-mat here in the first place?  With a rocket ship?"

     This puzzles the Doctor and I confess I've forgotten the how as well.  Oops!

More Of Lord Peter's Crossword

There was a Note about the solution ICTUS, because if you add the Roman numeral V for five, it became VICTUS, And ICTUS is also to do with 'feet' in verse or somesuch.  

     Here's another: "By this Jew's work the whole we find; In a glass clearly, darkly in the mind"

     And the solution is SPINOZA, who wrote about philosophy and the science of optics.  That makes it all okay then.  Art!

Spinny + wig