O Canada!

It Is A Source Of Much Regret -

(You can tell this is serious since I've not trotted out the phrase 'Canuckistanians' yet) that the Western world remains largely unaware of how much we all owe to the Land Of The Maple Leaf in both Unpleasantnesses.  The thing about the British Americans is that they're so self-effacing and modest that they have the grace to look embarrassed if one brings up the subject of James Doohan the Royal Canadian Artillery officer.  Art!

Also, the maddest pilot in Western Europe

     About the only reference to them is in the film "Passchendaele", wh

     ANYWAY they also came to the party when the Norks invaded the Sorks and kicked off the Korean War.  There were Canuckistanians soldiers on the ground as part of the 27th Commonwealth Brigade, as well as Royal Canadian Navy warships and Royal Canadian Air Force aircraft (primarily logistics airframes*).

     The guys first in on the ground were, of course - obviously! - the Perky Pats, or the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry.  How aboot that?  These chaps have a Presidential Unit Citation as a battle honour, which you wont' find in a loot box in your computer game.  Matey.  Art!

Sending the Norks a little merriment

          We could harp on about the martial qualities of the Canuckistanians, which would only embarrass them, the modest rascals, yet that's not what this Intro is about.  Psych!

     You see, there was a fascinating story on Quora in answer to the question "Have you ever worked with someone who tried to get you fired?" and in this sense the 'fired' was more literally than analogy.  The setting was Canada.

     The Original Poster was Bengt, a Scandinavian name that I am not going to grace with a surname, just to protect his privacy, because the FSB, Spectrum and UNIT will all be on this later tonight.  Art!

Not quite what I wanted, Art.  But thanks for trying.

     Bengt, you see, had the Secretary From Hell.  She was an habitual liar, and always drunk on the job.  Being tiddly in a bar at twenty-one-hundred hours on Friday is fine; being tight in the office at ten-thirty two on a Tuesday it not.

     Bengt had, by this time, three written warnings against SFH, so he officially fired her.

     He didn't count on her drunken-bottomed self not understanding what happened the day before, because he turned up next morning - and there she was, betwixt the coffee machine and a 'TWX' machine.  Art!

Telex

     SFH, on realising she'd been fired, threw the full coffee pot at Bengt, then tried to demolish the office before storming off.

     Bengt, being a level-headed chap, headed home for a camera so he could document the mess.  This is obviously decades before mobile phones and digital cameras, gentle reader.  When he got back to the building, the facilities manager politely demurred; apparently SFH had come back to the office, looking for her ex-manager - with a gun in one hand and a flower pot in the other.  The gun we can explain, the flower - impromptu makeshift memorial?  Art!

     

CAUTION!  Do not drop on foot.

     The plot thickened.  Apparently SFH had forged Bengt's signature and cashed company cheques at a nearby bank, splitting the take with the bank manager.  SPOILER both went to jail, especially SFH with her illegal gun to be taken into account.
     She had also been using that TWX machine to send a message to 80 of this multi-national company's branches, to wit: "This is your official notification.  Bengt L******* is dead and will never respond to any more business mail."  Somewhat premature, thankfully.  Probably didn't go down well with the jury, either.

     Bengt informed that the gun was a Russian 9mm, probably a Tokarev, which she had brought back from Korea when she was the secretary for a Canadian general during the Korean War.

     Which is where we came in.

Conrad: Triumphant Yet Baffled

Whilst wasting hours and hours at Quora - really, the Dog Buns! site should come with a health warning about time spent there - Your Humble Scribe noticed a peculiar image in one of the sidebar adverts.

     "What on earth is that?" I mused.  "It looks like an hideous toy version of a tardigrade."

     We have covered these delightful little micro-organisms before.  Art!

     Briefly put, they inhabit environmental niches at extremes that would destroy nearly all other organisms, then come back and ask for more.  Art!

     Yup, it's a tardigrade plushy.  Well recognised me - now who on earth would want one of these things?

"City In The Sky"

You can lambast Conrad because his fan-fiction doesn't have an editor, a person who can stand back and say 'This bit is redundant, get rid' or 'More background needed' or 'Padding, remove' or 'This sub-plot deserves its own story'.

     Well, there are real authors out there with the same problem.  The author of "The Passage" for one.  There was another a few years back, who wrote another thousand-word opus that was merely the first of a trilogy, about an artificially-induced pandemic.  It can't have been that good, I can't remember either title or author.

     ANYWAY let's get into more of how Sir Richard Branson Saves The World.

      ‘Come on come on, pick up.  Martin!  This is Mark – are you home yet?  No.  Damn.  Listen, when you get in, put on a news channel and wait for something called the White Knight to come up.  Believe me, you’ll know what I mean when you see it.’

     He closed the phone and kissed Marcie with passion.

    It took three days for them to arrange an interview with Sir Richard.  The fact that both were members of the Bonetti Report’s panel made the process a little easier.  They didn’t push the link too much, just in case it backfired – a lot of people didn’t want to hear how close the world was to meltdown.

      Their meeting made Mark nervous.  Martin didn’t show any great emotion.  They were shown to a room more akin to an open-plan waiting room than the corporate office of a billionaire entrepreneur, with subdued lighting, big comfortable chairs, giant potted ferns, and desks scattered about.

     Sir Richard, looking like a man about to go for a stroll down a country lane, gestured them both over to a cluster of chairs.

     ‘Can I get you a drink?  Anything hot or cold?’

    Martin politely refused.  Mark asked for orange juice.  Minutes later a PA appeared with a tray holding  a pot of tea and a glass of orange juice beaded with condensation.

     The perks of high command.

"Clandestine" By James Ellroy

Finished this today, and you know what?  It actually has an optimistic ending, for an Ellroy novel.  Our Hero Freddy Underhill (no Frodo Baggins jokes, please) ends up alive and with his wife, the Exceedingly Bad Guy gets killed, justice is done (if unacknowledged) and the orphan gets adopted.  Art!

     My copy cost £1.50, thanks.

     There is a bit of a "The Big Sleep" touch about it.  The first murder victim that Freddy and Wacky come across, Leona James, remains an unsolved killing.

     Also memorable for introducing Lieutenant Dudley Smith, whom you may know from other works.  Art!

James Cromwell's finest moment

     Conrad also learned a few golfing terms.

Finally -

First Bus really lived down to their standards today.  Your Humble Scribe ought to have seen 4 buses in the 25 minutes he was waiting, and in cold hard actuality encountered all of 1.  Which was, of course - obviously! - utterly rammed. Art!

"The Expanse"

     In this stellar sci-fi series there is a phenomenon known as 'Going dutchman', where a ship hitting a Ring Gate at too high a speed simply vanishes and never re-appears on the other side.

     Clearly inspired by First Bus and their Public Service Vehicles 'Going dutchman' on the A625.  It's the only explanation.

*  I love saying this word, it sounds like I know what I'm talking about.