Notable Chairs, That Is
(Or seats). How could I be so forgetful! Yes yes yes, never mind the old age and gin, it was a rhetorical question. You needn't be so literal.
ANYWAY the item is in the very title, to wit: "The Silver Chair", by C. S. Lewis, and if that idle rascal Art will put down his plate of coal for one instant -
Ah. Yes. Dull as ditch-water, isn't it? although ditch-water is doubtless hotching with all sorts of interesting micro-organisms, meaning we miss out on so much thanks to not having microscopes for ey
ANYWAY I think we need to go back and insert a bit of blood and thunder in picture form. Go on, Art, I'll give you free choice (don't make me regret it).
Hmmm, yes, very apt, Art, here, have a bowl of best coking coal and a fork. We've been a-pondering PoD here at BOOJUM! and will come back to it, I promise.
Okay, back to the wild thrill-ride that was OP's story about his folding chair and his stupid, immature family who were always trying to prank him about it. It gets a lot wilder, I can tell you. Art!
Brother In Law coughed up the money for a new chair. Hooray! Family at get-togethers still gave OP the stink-eye for - in their minds - sucking all the 'fun' out of events. And, wouldn't you know it, when OP went to the bathroom, he came back to find his nephew in his seat and had to turf him out, causing a small flood of salty tears.
BIL, you see, using his son as a proxy, had told him to sit in OP's folding chair. Booh!
There was a BIG argument. OP and his parents pointed out that the joke died a sad lonely death years ago, was never that funny in the first place and had become mere bullying. Art!
When they pointed out BIL was setting a bad example for his son, BIL, in a fit of unthinking rage, hurled the (robust and sturdy metal-framed) chair through the front window.
The front bay window. O those things are pricey to replace and we at The Mansion ought to know. BIL took off in his car, only to be threatened with 1) the police and 2) divorce, which brought him back to offer an apology and payment for the window.
This seemed to settle things, with the extended family - grudgingly - accommodating OP and his robust and sturdy metal-framed chair, which survived it's trial by window utterly unscathed. He sure got his $50 worth from that chair, in entertainment value if nothing else. Art!
CAUTION! Considerably stronger than glazing
Then, just to prove how incredibly immature the entire family was, they resorted to other 'fun-filled hilarious pranks' at family gatherings, ending with a glitter bomb.
The party responsible for this particular fun-filled hilarious prank were presented with the bill from professional carpet cleaners, which would have begun at about $100. This quashed the fun-filled japery.
Incidentally, the BIL cut down on his drinking and both he and his wife went to marriage counselling, so there was another positive outcome. Hooray!
You think we're done yet? Dog Buns no! But I shall reserve that for a later date, as we've got a lot to get through.
Gosh, aren't other folks troubles interesting to read about?
A National Public Seating* folding steel chair as beloved by OP
"Prince Of Darkness"
I've re-visited a few Youtube vlogs that have looked at this John Carpenter film from the perspective of a generation later - a frightening sentence to type! They are pretty universal in stating how unappreciated it was at the time, as JC himself admitted. Though, as he also points out, it got a second wind when home-video arrived. Art!
This 'underground chamber' was actually in a decaying abandoned hotel, where one did not dare sneeze for fear of the walls and ceiling collapsing.
The idea for PoD came to JC, he alleges, as he was reading a work about quantum physics - as one does in one's spare time - which he combined with a central idea from a novel by Gregory Benford. The whole wrapped in an independent production where he didn't have to dance to the tune of a studio, which may be why it has such a downer of an ending.
"I like a bit of doom and gloom" he quoth. Art!
 |
| "I have a message and you're not going to like it - Pray for death." |
Equally Grim Yet Entirely Real
Thanks to vlogger Joe Blogs for putting across complicated economic data and concepts in terms comprehensible to the rest of us.
For Lo! we are back on the fraught matter of the Ruffian economy, where the amount of data released publicly gets ever less, and what is released is subject to very severe review. Petrol stations i- which I will not call by any other name, South Canada take note - in Ruffia are already selling by the 0.9 litre instead of the 1.0 measure. Art!
Ruffia has, tellingly, cruelly and accurately, been described as a 'Petrol station with nukes', which is one step up from back in the Nineties, when it was 'The Upper Volta with nukes'. They don't manufacture anything, instead they import everything.
Thus we get their Balance Of Trade, or the difference between the revenue of what they export and the cost of what they import, the latter being the result of a terrible BoT. The cost of imports, thanks to the continued slide of the ruble on international markets, has risen by 79% despite a drop in overall volume. Art!
For this time in 2022, monthly imports cost $23 billion, which equated ₽1.4 trillion. This month, the import bill has risen slightly to $26 billion, but now costs ₽2.5 trillion. There is no prospect of imports dropping because Ruffia simply isn't self-sufficient in these items. Or the ones that they can get past sanctions.
"City In The Sky"
The bucolic dwellers in New Eucla are a little, shall we say, 'astray' when it comes to understanding what's been prowling the outback with hostile intent.
Lenny got a bright idea.
‘You lot up there could get rid of them, couldn’t you!’ he announced
brightly, pleased with his deductive skills.
‘Yeah, get rid of them.’ He
warmed to his theme. ‘We could use
trucks to repair the Eyre, instead of horses and carts. Yeah, if you get rid of them.’
Ace kicked Alex’s seat slyly before he could interrupt, causing him to
recall the Doctor’s words of caution earlier.
‘Oh?’ enquired the Timelord, politely.
‘How do you know that?’
‘I worked it out,’ declared Don, proudly. ‘Only possible explanation. All the places were blown up, roasted, in
nothing flat. One workshop that got done
in – Morris Vickers’ place, out by Barralonga – got destroyed right next to the
coaling station, six feet away, and that wasn’t touched. And there’s a couple hundred miles between
the turbine workshop and the telegraph station, with nobody seen near them at
all. Yeah. Death satellites. I read all about them in the library.’
Lenny nodded in solemn agreement.
‘You bet! I’m old enough to
remember the Big Crash. That started
when the Yanks blew up a load of Pak missiles on their launch-pads with Death Sats. Yeah.’
Ace, having had a grandstand seat at Armageddon, knew differently. She pondered for a second about how modern
myths developed, before catching up with the Doctor as he carried on in his
blandly sincere tone.
The Death Sats. Sounds like an Eighties post-punk band.
As Promised
Yesteryon's click-baity picture intended to entice the passing electronic footprint bears repeating, so let me prod Art awake from his coal-induced stupor -
No, I've no idea if he gets royalties or not. I would like to point you to the partially disassembled robot figure in the bottom starboard corner, and if we continue to prod Art -
Hmmmm pondered Conrad. It looks kind of familiar. Where, in the depths of my skip-like brain, have I encountered it previously? Let me stir things up with a shovel and see if any clue arises -
Well well well A.G. Bell, someone's been pinching cover illustrations, haven't they? Conrad hasn't read "Tik-Tok" but I have read "Deus Irae", which does feature decrepit robots. Could I be bothered I'd find out the publication date of each and see which came first, except I can't.
Cheap Editorial Policy
There is a continuing trend amongst British media to print up stories from Reddit and phrase the headlines as if they were British stories, when they are usually South Canadian. Case in point:
It's hardly a 'story' when it's merely copied from Reddit. Come on, even Your Humble Scribe puts more effort into it than that!
BAH!
* Windowproof
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