Attack Of The DEMOGORGON!

I Know What You're Thinking

Because I'm fairly clever and you're fairly predictable and NO NOTHING TO DO WITH THE D.A.R.P.A. TELEPATHY HELMET - I've told you, it was a long-term 'borrow' and they got it back ages ago - I can tell what lines your minds run along.

     "Tut, the snowy-haired old duffer is blatantly appealing to the 'Stranger Things' audience, sad really, he used to be less -"

     YES yes yes, never mind.  Although I will sneak in a picture.  Art!

     This is a case of true serendipity, because Your Humble Scribe was leafing through his "Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable" in search of something completely different - and we'll get onto that in time - when I came across the entry about "Demogorgon".  As proof, here's a photo of the entry.  Art!

     Hmmm a bit too small.  Art!   Close-up!

     The name of this devilish entity has a historical record going back to the 4th century AD, and gets mentioned in both "Paradise Lost" and "Prometheus Unbound".  Conrad had no idea it had such a pedigree because he hates poetry almost as much as musicals.

     ANYWAY of course - obviously! - that has nothing to do with what I originally wanted to look up, but it does confirm my suspicion that BDOPAF is almost as dangerously distracting as Quora.

     ANYWAY AGAIN I was looking up the term "White elephant" to find out the source of this phrase.  It transpires that in South East Asia back in the day, and still in Thailand even now, the white elephant was regarded as a sacred beast.  Art!

     Being sacred means you can't put them to work.  Anyway, if the King of Siam was feeling malicious towards one of his nobles, he would gift them a white elephant as a token of his 'appreciation'.  Thus the noble has an elephant that needs only the best treatment, cannot be given away lest the King's feelings be hurt, cannot do any work and most certainly cannot be served up as chops for dinner.  The upkeep being so ruinous would result in a poverty-stricken noble, and a warning to others not to upset Kingy.

     Enter Shoreham Nuclear Power Station.  Yes, the very same one as yesteryon.  Art!

     To say that it's construction was unpopular with locals is an understatement of epic proportions; had they been in Europe they'd have been stormed with pitchforks and burning torches.  The Three Mile Island disaster didn't help in making locals still more hostile towards nuclear power.  Despite this LILCO pressed ahead with construction, the whole thing being completed by 1984.  Two years later came Chernobyl, and public confidence in atomic plant safety, already low, sank yet further.

     Enter the politicians - always a bad sign.  You see, in order for the plant to run at full power, there had to be a valid evacuation plan for the whole of Suffolk County, that being the county Shoreham was within.  Remember the hostile locals?  They refused to accept any part of the evacuation plan, so State Governor Cuomo forbade the plant to run at full power, only allowing a 5% output.  Art!

The people are revolting!

     After 5 years of minimal operation it became obvious that insufficient people would ever sign on to the evacuation plan, so they won.  

     Kind of.  You see, the plant cost LILCO $6 billion and under the deal they did with the State of NY, they walked away not having to pay any of it - that cost was hoiked off onto the citizens of Long Island.  Conrad cynically wonders how much LILCO forked out in bribes to have that happen.

     This white elephant - d'you see what I did there? - was eventually decommissioned in 1994.

Hubris

That's the Greek word for pride or arrogance, which, combined with ambition, bring about the transgressor's fall from grace.

     This is another pithy tale from Quora, set in a major HQ building for a major company, with a subsidised canteen.  Meaning you got your food for a lot less than you ought to, the company seeing this as a boost to employee morale and a good point in staff retention.

     The company, never named, is based in the UK, as you can tell from the last sentence above.  Art!

     Here we have Jared, a systems analyst, who decided it was beneath him to pay for food.  He infested the canteen at it's busiest and avoided going through the tills, striding about as if he'd paid for his food, and he did this for a year, probably feeling quite smug about getting away with it.  His colleagues, who all paid for their lunches, found out and told on him to senior management, who followed him on the canteen's CCTV for a week.

     Busted!

     He was immediately fired.  He got no reference - which meant an embarrassing year-long gap in his CV that would be hard to explain.  It was politely explained that he'd better not make a fuss or 1) The catering company that ran the canteen would sue him and 2) The police would be involved.
     He saved £1,825 over the year.

     His annual salary was £60,000.

     As I said, hubris.

     Wow!  Try not to frighten it away, I see blue skies outside!

"The Sea Of Sand"

The Doctor has done some remarkable work with ballistics, a tracer bullet and a four-gallon tin of petrol, all to create a diversion.

The Doctor made an expansive gesture of false modesty.

          ‘Oh, Sergeant Lucy.  Royal Irish Rifles.  The retreat from Mons.’

          There wasn’t time for Roger to argue that the retreat from Mons occurred a good twenty-seven years previously.  Instead they dispersed the vehicles, knowing that to leave the wadi they must travel north to begin with.

          Already, whilst they moved, shells in the burning stack of crates were beginning to “cook off” under the heat.  Bangs and whines echoed across the desert.  The two pounder rounds were solid armour-piercing ones, and wouldn’t explode when they hit the ground, but they would make a nasty mess of anyone hit, as would shrapnel from their shell casings.

          They dropped the Doctor off at the point where the wadi reached ground level.  He kept low for several anxious minutes, Dominione’s parting words “I hope a simple list is worth risking your life for” resonating.  Yes, he hoped the list was worth it too.

          After moving west he turned south and headed towards the depot, which loomed unmissably in the dark, illuminated flash-bulb style by explosions that wracked the western edge.  There were no sentries, nor black tanks on watch duty.  A particularly large explosion sent bits of shrapnel zipping and bouncing around him.

     I believe Sergeant Lucy of the RIR was a real person who wrote a memoir about his part in the Mons campaign - "There's A Devil In The Drum" IIRC.

Going Out In A Twinkle Of Glory

It's my last day at Footasylum tomorrow, and even though the agency say they are looking to take on a few temps as permanent, Conrad is pretty certain they won't offer him anything.  After all, I spend my day scowling as I listen to my i-pod in order to avoid the sonic sewage they play from Spotify.

     So!  I think it's time to bake a goodbye cake.  This may necessitate a trip into Lower Sodom so I hope those blue skies persist.  Art!

     Conrad: still baffled at being associated with expensive contemporary fashion.

Finally -

Low on socks and underwear.  Laundry wash needed.