Mangle, Boys, Mangle!

Just To Be Clear

Those are metaphorical, allegorical 'boys' who can also be girls at the same time, and let it not be misconstrued that we are talking about doing the laundry as of about 1907, when they used apparati such as this.  Art!

A clothes mangle

     I believe the practice was to take your clothes out of the wash tub, then stick them in the mangle, ratchet down that top crank, and then spin the wheel, which would brutally squeeze the water out of the poor hapless clothing.  It would very obviously not do to get any loose clothing or hair en

     ANYWAY I bring you another tale of manglement, where the incompetent get the chance to prove that yes, people are indeed promoted to a level above their ability.  And there they stay, to the detriment of all around them.  Art!

     The Original Poster had been hired as an office manager, responsible for account receivables, sitting on-site at one of his company's biggest customers.  FYI, 'account receivables' are the monies that a business owes to another party for goods or services provided.  Typically you want these reduced to as little as possible, because all that money needs to be sitting in your corporate account; the other parties, however, will seek to delay these payments as long as possible, because that money earns them interest if they keep it in their hot sweaty hands.

     When OP took over, the A/R stood at over $5 million, and indeed ballooned to over $8 million.  One major, irreconcilable problem was that company and customer used completely different billing systems, and refused to change to the other's system.  Art!

     Kind of a clash between these two.  OP, being a smart cookie, created a program that converted one to the other, and vice-versa.  Clever OP!  This allowed his department to reduce the A/R to zero.  He was promoted out of that department into another position.

     Then, post 9/11, business tanked.  The department OP had worked in was cut from 14 staff to 2,including the person replacing him.  OP offered to compile a manual on how use his translation program even as he and his department was being laid off.

     "No need, we're good!" blithely replied the idiots in power.  They also ignored OP's warning that, once he was gone, he wasn't ever coming back.  Art!

     Manglement continued cutting staff, regardless of the consequences, with the end result that half their local customers walked and, when OP called them for a reference, they pleaded with him to come back.

     The business closed down 6 months later.  What a surprise!  Once you get into that sack-slide spiral the business is toast, because as you lost customers you can't afford to keep the staff on, which poor performance leads to more customers walking away, and so on.

Donnie Brass Co

No, nothing to do with the film starring Johnny Depp, which was based on a book I've read, back in the days I was haunting libraries.  Art!

     No, it's my latest epithet describing Citizen Trump, whose posts on Truth Social are beginning to sound like the ravings of a street-corner nutter.  He keeps posting about the 'Hard core Marxists and fascists" who have it in for him, yet somehow, unaccountably, he can never bring himself to name these sinister people.  A South Canadian Marxist in a position of power?  I think we should be told!

     Also, apparently those three new charges in the superceding indictment are very much more challenging than appears at first sight.  Because DJ Tango has been caught trying to destroy evidence held on Mar-a-Lago security servers, this is proof of intent and that he knew he was doing wrong.  Art!

You can't deny he has a brassy hue to him

     I did tastelessly suggest that his safest legal tactic to deflect punishment may be to suffer a stroke; this may not now be enough and he'll have to die to avoid prison.

The Curious Case Of The Dog In The Night

Yes, the old saw from Sherlock Holmes about a dog not doing anything was a vital clue.  Because it recognised the villain, you see, meaning that the crime was an inside job.

     ANYWAY as you may have heard, a Mysterious Drone Attack took place in the Potemkin town of Moscow City in the small hours.  Art!

     Ruffian state television's response to this was telling; they completely ignored it.  Very dog in the night!  They were obviously waiting to get their steer from the Kremlin and didn't dare speculate until told what to say and how to say it.

     The thing that will be making Putin On The Fritz change his underwear at regular intervals is that it is highly unlikely that these drones came from Ukraine.  More dog in the night!  It's 500 kilometres from the Ukrainian border to Moscow, and the city has seen a visible increase in the number of anti-aircraft missile systems and radars.  These ought to be able to protect it yet plainly cannot.  What Dwarvish Dimya will be worrying is whether these drones are being sent by Russians, from inside Russia.  That way, they'd only need to be a few tens of kilometres from the capital, consequently cutting down on their flight time and reducing the window of interception for all those missiles.  Art!

Grimly deadpan Budanov.  All he needs is a white cat.
(And a deerstalker hat)

"City In The Sky"

The Doctor has had a guided tour of Arcology One and is now pondering why the madness has broken out on Earth below.

     The Doctor felt he’d seen enough of Arcology One to decide it was a stable, well-organised environment capable of operating for decades.  It wasn’t as if he couldn’t see it all; simply by leaning back slightly a person could witness everything across the inner surface.  The only thing he’d not seen up close were silent, bulky tracked platforms that moved bales of processed hemp on the opposite side of the sphere.  Doubtless electrically-powered; no use of toxic hydrocarbons in a closed environment.

     ‘I said - ’ began Virginia again, louder, getting annoyed at the feigned ignorance of Doctor Smith – who suddenly looked up with an apologetic smile, tipping his hat in acknowledgement.

     ‘I’m sorry, Mizz Branson.  Miles away.  Your colony up here seems perfectly viable.  What makes me wonder is why, after decades of reasonable stability bar the Little Crash, the nations of Earth abruptly decide to wage war without reason.’

     The woman sat down heavily on the bench next to the little man.  His short speech encapsulated hours of worried debate between crew members on that exact subject.

     ‘You wonder!  So do we all.  If politics was going to break down or war break out, I always expected it in the Far East, between China and Taiwan or, perhaps in a very unlikely circumstance, China and Russia.  This behaviour from Pakistan is insane.’

     He's very obviously not the only one.

You What?

Conrad had to read the item twice to make sure I'd understood it.  Apparently people in the Populous Dictatorship were questioning whether a 'sun bear' was actually a human being wearing a bear costume.  Art!

     They'd have to be a very small person, because sun bears are very small bears.  And I strongly doubt that other bears would tolerate anyone copy-catting them.  Nor do I think any member of Hom. Sap. would fare well on a diet of plants and insects.  But, you never can tell.  Mealworms for the win!

Finally -

The shades of night fall early (20:08).  For one thing the monsoon clouds are back again, and we passed the equinox over a month ago.