Hyvää Utta Vuotta!

Which Is, Of Course - Obviously! - Finnish For "Happy New Year!"

Yes Yes Yes, I am being a little precipitate.  So what, sue me.  They're already celebrating in the lands of the Ockers and the Polite Australians.

     Okay, this year of 2023 has seen the tenth anniversary of BOOJUM! being launched upon an unsuspecting world.  That's world's problem, world should have been better prepared.  Art!

     Because Conrad never avoids an opportunity to big up FB.  If I've watched it once a year since video tapes came out in the late Eighties, then I've watched it AT LEAST thirty-five times.  I can also tell you that at no point in the film does Robbie amble about in his endearing manner, carrying a scantily-clad young lady and if you look close enough I think her und

     ANYWAY enough of pandering to you slobbering perverts, let the links begin.

2022

BOOJUM!: Copping Out (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

From last year's ghastly gig at Footasylump

2021

BOOJUM!: The Foggy Foggy Blew (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2020

BOOJUM!: Brain-Panning (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2019

BOOJUM!: USAFunny (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2018

BOOJUM!: Gun Jesus Snickers (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2017

BOOJUM!: Rubber Soul (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2016

BOOJUM!: Don't Look back In Bangor (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2015

BOOJUM!: My Life As A Dot (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2014

BOOJUM!: A Look Back & Sal No Mobarak! (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2013

BOOJUM!: Conrad Predicts - (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

The Return Of Plummet Airlines

You  May Remember This From A While Back

Plummet Airlines were a band from the mid to late Seventies, whom I remember from being on John Peel, because I have a retentive memory for nonsense like that.  They were alright and did modestly well when around.  Art!

Continuing the aviation theme

     I am minded of that sketch from the above, about flying sheep.  Or, rather, sheep attempting to fly.  As we both surely realise, sheep are in no way designed to fly, and they don't have the mechanical skills with which Hom. Sap. overcomes their own deficiency in this area.  

Notice that they do not so much fly as... plummet. (Baaa baaa... flap flap... thud.)

    A quote from said sketch.  DO NOT CONTINUE TO DO MONTY PYTHON SKETCHES.  This has been a strict rule in several office environments that Your Humble Scribe has worked in.

     Here an aside.  Yes yes yes, it IS to do with flying.  In mid 1917, during the First Unpleantness, Manfred Von Richthofen got permission from his higher-ups to combine four Teuton 'Jastas' into one large formation, full of the very best pilots flying the latest aircraft.  It became known as a 'Flying Circus', partly because of the multi-coloured paint schemes adopted by the pilots - Art!

     Partly because they were a shiftless and transient formation, constantly on the move to wherever a temporary air superiority was needed.

     ANYWAY as you may have guessed, this Intro is about the torrid time that transport by air is having in Ruffia.  Unlike the beautifully compact nature of This Sceptred Isle, Ruffia is the biggest country on the planet and needs air transport to move people and supplies around.  This is especially true for the inhabitants of cities, towns and villages within the Arctic Circle, where there is simply no road or rail route in or out.

     All data courtesy Joe Blogs, derived from official Ruffian sources, with additional local colour thanks to Conrad.

RUFFIAN AIRLINES: Looking at the statistics for Passengers Carried (PAX), these initially look quite handsome.  November 2023 saw 3.6 million PAX as opposed to a mere 2.9 million in 2022.  For the 11 months to date of 2023, 46.3 million PAX versus 37.6 million in 2022.  Looks pretty good, hmmmm?     Wellllll that is until you realise the problems Aeroflot has suffered with parts, servicing, maintenance, software and capital funding.  All thanks to sanctions.  Art!

More like 'Aeroflop'
O my biting caustic wit!

SANCTIONS: Of the 1,000 commercial aircraft that Ruffia had pre-Special Idiotic Operation, 872 were leased from Boeing or Airbus, or 77% if you pine for percentages.  Western sanctions immediately hit this fleet when the Ruffians refused to return them to the lessors - essentially stealing them.  78 of these planes were abroad when the SIO began and were thus promptly interned.  Losing nearly 8% of your stolen fleet right off the bat is - well, it's not good.

     Sanctions meant that expired parts couldn't be replaced when inventory ran out, and thanks to Chipmunk Cheeks not telling anyone about his SIO ahead of time, there hadn't been any chance to build up a reserve.  Just as serious was the immediate cessation of software updates, because today's airliners have a ton of computers interfacing with and controlling everything.  Art!

So many controls!

     Thus, legally, these planes couldn't be flown.  Except remember how Ruffia needs air transport?  So Peter The Average forced through laws that kept these aircraft flying.  Short-term solution to a long-term problem.

AIRPLANE STRIPPING: WASH OUT YOUR FILTHY MINDS!  No, this is nothing to do with cabin crew making money on the side.  Rather, the number of Boeing and Airbus craft now in the air is down to 450, because they are cannibalising the other 422 for spare parts.  This is obviously a wasting resource and the projection is that in 12 months the flying airframes will be down to 350 or less.  Lack of spare parts for brakes has led to pilots using aircraft's engine thrust to slow planes on the tarmac.  Yeah, great, except if this was sensible or safe then aircraft wouldn't need brakes in the first place.  Art!

Ongoing since August 2022

RUSSIAN AIRCRAFT AND TSAR PUTIN: In order to deal with this shrinking fleet of aircraft, the Fun-Sized Foot Fiddler has decreed that 1,000 new planes need to be built by 2030.  This is 166 planes per year, which is about the same number China has produced over half-a-dozen years - and they're not sanctioned up the wazoo, so can happily fill their jets to the value of 50% Western components.  Art!

PROGNOSIS: There have been no major Ruffian aviation disasters.  So far.  Konstantin, the 'Big K' of "Inside Russia", refuses to travel on Ruffian aircraft as he considers them so dangerous and that 2024 is probably going to usher in a real tragedy.  We know that two Ruffian jets have made emergency landings, without casualties, which phenomenon is only likely to increase.  And no, China cannot step into the breach as their own airliner industry is both new and small in scale.  Ruffia itself lacks the capital to create any new airline industries.

     JB finished by pointing out that Ruffian airlines have been given a $12 billion subsidy, which is great, except - that word again - it came from the National Wealth Fund.  You know, the fund that's also propping up the ruble and paying the national monthly deficit.

     Ooo-err Matron!

"Space 1999: Force Of Life"

Conrad remembers watching this first time around, where an unfortunate Ian McShane gets firstly zapped by a glowing alien light-source - always a bad sign - and later zapped by one of the Moonbase sidearms.  Art!

     It most emphatically is NOT a 'Stun gun', as it is quite capable of blowing holes in the scenery - when the plot calls for it.  Actually, having a beam weapon like this in a lunar environment is common sense; anything that fires a bullet risks breaking vacuum seals and causing blowouts, as hap

     ANYWAY McShane's character gets a fatal zapping from a Sidearm, or so they think.  Art!

Crispy, as baked potatoes were before microwaves

     In fact it renders him unto what "Science Fiction Monthly" evocatively described as 'a baked potato on legs'.

     So far I think the body count has been 16 from the original Moonbase total of 311.  It's not clear if that includes the Commissioner so lets say 312.

"The War Illustrated"

Dog Buns, the season of peace and goodwill is over, so I'm going to add another photo from the magazine.  Art!

     The caption states that this is dug-in British infantry before they took San Angelo (in Italy).  Weapons buffs can note the Bren, Thompson sub-machine gun and Lee Enfield Mk. 7.  Having a Thompson - from where we derive the slang 'Tommy-gun' - is a mark of favour, as they were expensive and normally got replaced by the much shoddier (and cheaper!) Sten gun.  Note also the chap running IN FRONT of all the guns, which is pretty stupid because what if they begin firing?  He is also wearing what appears to be a camouflaged jerkin, an item of kit I've not seen before.

     Two photos.  So sue me.  These show something of the polyglot nature of the Allied forces in Italy, as these soldiers are French - you can tell by the Adrian helmets they're wearing.  The French were specialists in mountain warfare, which was handy in mountainous Italy.  That knocked-out Teuton vehicle is NOT a 'Mark III tank', it's a Sturmgeshutz, an assault gun based on a Mark III chassis.  Just so you know.

"City In The Sky"

 We're beginning to get to the root of what's caused an outbreak of fever aboard Arcology One.

     ‘No, God be thanked!’   Davy responded like a medic.  ‘Also, Barclay is exaggerating.  The disease isn’t a plague, bacillus pestis or anything like that – for which we are grateful – and is more like - ’

     ‘A fever with high temperature, debilitating pains, light sensitivity, nausea, yes, yes, yes.’

     ‘How did you know?’ asked a bewildered Davy.  Could the little man see into orbit from Downstairs?

     ‘Alex has already suffered a similar attack in New Eucla.  It passed within a day.  I suggest you triage your patients and devote the most care and pharmaceutical attention to the old, the very young and the infirm.  Everyone else will get better on their own.’

     A nasty suspicious feeling came over Davy.

     ‘Doctor Smith, did you intend to deliberately spread this disease up here?’

     ‘Certainly not!’ came the indignant response, followed closely by an embarassed cough.  ‘I intended to use Alex as a guinea pig, to see if you lot could survive Downstairs without being wiped out by novel diseases.  You can.’

     ‘Pretty cold-blooded,’ accused Davy.

     ‘You wouldn’t have let me bring him if I’d told you the whole story.   Now, I need to speak to Ace, quickly.’

     He's not denying it, though, is he?

Finally  -

Your Modest Artisan now needs to take a trot into Lesser Sodom, in order to get hold of some double cream for my ice cream recipe, and to see if anything is going cheap.  Christmas Eve was a complete bust on that score so I am not holding any great hopes.  But we shall see.

     Kwaheri!

Killer Tons

No!  That Is Not A Typo For "Kilotons"

It is, tasteless as we are, quite apposite if pronounced the same.  For Lo! today we are looking at what you might technically call "Kilotons of Tri-Nitro-Toluene Equivalent", usually abbreviated to simply 'Kilotons', when talking about extremely large explosions.  

     Here an aside.  Yes, already!  Your Humble Scribe heard a song over the tannoy in some retail establishment or other, and was quite taken with the chorus, which involved "Summer", "Sun" and what sounded like a set of tubular bells being played.  Art!

A misnomer of a title

     Hmmm it turned out to be "Summer Son" by Texas, which I tracked down thanks to my superior Google-fu skills.

     ANYWAY back to big bangs.  There was, of late, a Ruffian ship that went off in harbour at Feodosia, thanks to Stormzy taking an interest in it, and the cargo being lots and lots of high explosives.  The ship is now a wreck at the dockside, and various large bits of it have been located up to a kilometer one-sixth of a mile away.  Art!

Embedded a yard into the ground.  Also, love, beware of windows.

     I bet you think that's impressive, nicht wahr?  Not so.  One-hundred and six years ago there was an appalling catastrophe in the port of Halifax, in Canuckistan, which dwarfs this one.  The Ruffian ship was only carrying 500 tons of cargo.  Art!

December 1917

      THIS is what happens when 2,810 tons of high explosive goes off.  You see, the Mont-Blanc, a French freighter carrying this cargo, had been hit by the Nork Imo, breaching her hull and smashing containers of benzol, which is a liquid itching to catch fire or explode, or catch fire and then explode, or just plain explode.  Art!

Before conversion to world's biggest 3D jigsaw

     The Imo then reversed out of the collision, which naturally created metal-on-metal sparks, and suddenly the MB was afire.  Her crew, well aware of what she carried, didn't try to scuttle her, which would have at least perhaps prevented an explosion; no, they hastened ashore and took cover.  Nineteen minutes after collision, the MB went up in the world's largest pre-nuclear explosion to date, killing over 1,500 people and injuring another 9,000.  Not surprising when you consider the blast was about 20% of the Hiroshima bomb's yield.  Art!

     Suprisingly, the Imo survived, though nobody on deck at the time did.  She was refloated, then converted into a whale-oil tanker re-christened "Governor" (and ran aground in 1920).  Unsurprisingly, nothing was left of the Mont-Blanc and pieces were found up to three miles from the port.  Art!

     Part of an half-ton anchor found over two miles from the harbour.  The thing  about ammunition freighters is that they carry enormous amounts of ordnance and if anything goes wrong, it goes SPECTACULARLY wrong.

     Expect the Ruffians to claim a bit of light buffing and some gaffer tape and their ship will be back in service soon.  Yeah, right.  How duMB can you get!

     Sadly, I'm afraid the Halifax disaster isn't unique, as there was an even larger explosion at Port Chicago in July 1944, and one almost as large in the port of Beirut in 2020.

     And now for an item of considerably lighter tone

MacGuffins Assemble!

Yes, we are back on the subject of "The Daily Beast"'s mysterious artefacts, which I've often put up in the past, and then not bothered to identify afterwards, which must have left you all angry and frustrated.  Tee hee!  I mean sorry.  Art!

     Shark Roleplay Prosthetic, Lineless Fishing Reel, World's Smallest Siren, Digital Veeblefetzer and Hand-Held Metaphorical Bottom-Hole Detector.  That's my best guess, powered by whimsy, complete fabrication and a tenuous connection with reality.

     For a change, let's see what they really are.  Art!

     So.  The 'shark' bit was accurate.  The rest is frankly boring.  Art!

     More bore.  Art!

     
     You know, I wasn't all that far out here.  These things are for attaching to an exhaust, so it makes - a silly noise?  Art!

     Conrad can safely guarantee these will be bought by middle-aged men who are overcompensating.  Art!

     Another deadly-dull car gadget, that - tell you what, skip that, informing you would make me fall asleep.  Art!

      Yet another deadly-dull car gadget, that - tell you what, skip that, informing you would make me fall asleep.  Again.  Henry Ford and Hans Daimler have a lot to answer for.

"City In The Sky"

Don't whine, you've just had a load of pictures, so you can just put up with a wall of text.  To recap, a nasty, highly-debilitating fever is running rampant aboard Arcology One.

     ‘Doctor Davros?’ came a tinny little voice from the cylinder, and Davy realised it was a miniature radio transceiver of very dated origin, nothing as sophisticated as the sphere’s Tabs.

     ‘Yes.  Who is – oh! – Doctor Smith!’ he spluttered.

     ‘Indeed,’ came the voice, and even though the faint reproduction was bad, the small man’s cold anger came across with chilling weight.   ‘And you are looking at both the source of your mystery plague and Patient Zero.’

     Barclay tottered over to an empty bamboo bed and draped himself across with all the presence of a banana skin.

     ‘K’nerek!’ blurted Davy, reverting to Armenian for a second.  ‘What the hell do you mean!’

     ‘I gave Ace strict instructions not to allow anyone access to this radio.  For the very good reason that it’s contaminated with micro-organisms from Australia that your sphere’s population have no resistance to.  Ace and I have our own immune systems that destroyed any such infection before it could spread.  The transciever has no such defence.’

     His face flushed with anger, Davy turned to glare, tight-lipped and biting his tongue, at the invalid Warden.  Barclay ignored him, panting heavily.

     ‘You allowed it to be brought aboard Arc One!’ continued Davy, almost as angry at Doctor Smith as he was with Barclay.

     ‘There’s no risk unless prolonged intimate contact is involved, which is why Ace wouldn’t have handed it over,’ sighed the other voice.  The tone changed.  ‘Any fatalities?’

     Not yet!

     I would also caution you  against translating the Armenian.  It might be extremely rude.

Further To My Wibblings

I may have used this map previously, as it fits in, at least roughly, with the historical era where my nonsense novel "The Annals Of Urquelomplangia" is set in terms of historical time.  Art!

     The salmon-coloured territory to starboard is the Ottoman Empire, which was on the back foot by this time (circa 1680), and the emerald is the Russian Tsardom.  Nor could I get the "Polish" part of the "Polish and Lithuanian Commonwealth" to fit in.  The blue circle delineates where Urquelomplangia would sit, if it had ever really existed.  Influenced by an unholy mèlange of Turkish, Russian, Polish, Magyar and Romanian, 'twould seem, and a reason why their spoken languages are either Polish or Teuton.

Bring On The Dancing Horses Fictional Spaceships

Yay!  Mike Siegel has done the Part Two he promised to review ages ago.  Art!

     Mike's ratings system goes from best to worst: Abduct Me Now; Along For The Ride; Not Great, Not Terrible; Fails At Max Q; Blows Up On The Launchpad.  He may be generous if a ship appeals to him under the <ahem> Rule Of Cool.  And to avoid any selection bias, the ship's order was selected randomly by his dogs.  Not sure how that works, but - okay.  Up first -

Conrad approves

     This is the 'Rocinante' from "The Expanse".  Mike and I both like it because it adheres to basic principles of physics; things like thrust, vectors, gravity, deceleration, streamlining and so on.  The only sci-fi bit about the R is her fusion-powered drive.  All the rest is perfectly feasible.  Mike also puts a shout out for the eminently sensible magnetic boots, that prevent floating aimlessly when not under drive.  He also, canny chap that he is, spotted that all the crew have either very short or bobbed hair, meaning no giant hairball in micro-gravity - which would be both a pain to CGI in, and a hazard on the flight deck when trying to fly, or carrying out any engineering.

     A well-earned "Abduct Me Now".

Finally -

Better get a few eatables together, and my evening pot of tea.  I have also decided that today is the last day of being Dry For December.  Sue me if you disagree.

     Ferewall!

I've Got The Future Then

Bear With Me On This

As not infrequently happens here, I am making this up as I go along, whilst also grooving to a television program I've not seen since it was first broadcast way back in <coughcough>tyseven, and I'm also paying homage to/stealing/being inspired <delete where necessary> that seminal album by Peter Hamill.  Art!

     I know you're wondering about today's title and Ol' Pete, because he's another dinosaur like Conrad, hailing back to the early Seventies when he was the driving force in Van Der Graaf Generator, the acid poetry rock band and then an artiste in his own right.  Art!

     Hmmm perhaps not the most appealing cover picture ever.

     ANYWAY what I wanted to blather on about today was how we were watching "Space 1999" from the years 1975 to 1977, when 1999 was almost quarter of a century away, and thus far into the future.  Ho ho, I can say, looking back at it from 2023.

     Here an aside.  Conrad has both Seasons downloaded off a thumb drive, onto my laptop, which have then been loaded onto a late-Christmas present thumb drive (my trusty old white-and-blue one has gone missing in the Sekrit Layr), which has been plugged into the big monitor's USB socket.  Art!

     Photo taken at an awkward angle as it's impossible to see the sockets with the Mark One Human Eyeball.  Old dog, alternate methodology.

  Being an old dog capable (with a sober head and a following wind) of learning new tricks as long as they're not too complex, I've used the "Source" button on the remote and - Art!

Ignore the light flare!  Ignore the light flare!

     This has the bonus - for me, if not for you - of being able to have it playing up there on the big screen whilst I compose words of wit, wisdom and wonder on my laptop.  I find - BOOJUM! is what I meant - that trying to watch "Sweet Home" and typing is much too problematic, as I don't understand spoken Korean and can't read the subtitles whilst typing away.  NO! I won't have any dubbing on anything I watch.  Away with you!

     Now (or then), there are other media that have to accommodate a disparity between Futuristic At The Time and getting embarrassed later on when they become sadly dated.  Art!

     

     Yes, Mister Mills, it was very Space Age when it first appeared.  We are, however, a whole 23 years on from the debut date and can you say 'a bit past it'? without saying 'a bit past it'?

     Nor is that all.  O noes.  A far larger victim of Unplanned Obsolescence was a film studio.  Art!

     They have since officially changed it to "21st Century Studios" within the business but have left the old logo up absent the "Fox" since it's widely recognised and brand recognition is a definite thing.

     Conrad remembers "Science Fiction Monthly" reviewing S1999 and dismissing the plot for it's pilot, "Breakaway", as being a big pile of unmitigated tosh.  This is correct: nuclear fuel rods do not suddenly generate gigantic magnetic fields, and even if they did, Spontaneous Gigaton Explosions would not occur.  As for the fatal effects of magnetic fields on the human brain - 

" It is shown that gradients of the Zeeman energy associated with the inhomogeneous applied fields can induce pressures of the order of 10–2Pa. The surface tension generated by the magnetic pressure, on the surface delimiting the brain region subject to relevant field and gradients, is found to range between 10–1 and 1 mN⋅m–1. "

     I hope that clears things up.

SFM did, grudgingly, admit that the special effects were very good for a television series, up to what was the Gold Standard of sci-fi at the time, "2001: A Space Odyssey" - O!  Gosh, there's another one of those Un

     I feel there is a creative seam to be mined here.  Expect more of S1999.

Serendipitous Schadenfreude

Go on, I'll explicate.  "Serendipitous" means an accidental discovery, and one of our very favourite words on the blog means "A malicious enjoyment of other people's misfortune".

     Conrad had earned 500 brownie points for taking Edna trotties this afternoon, as my step count this week has been low.  Upon gaining my window seat in the Sekrit Layr, I complained to her about how depressingly dark it was outside.  Art!

     Note the absence of Oldham Edge thanks to precipitation.  We'd timed it correctly and, as is visible, had time to prepare lunch.  Yes, including Conrad's stab at diabetic Raspberry and Yoghurt ice cream.  Then, what did I espy?  Art!

     How we laughed!*

Rob A Dub Dub

Yes, I knew you were all waiting for this update on Ol' Rob's demolition of the myth about Teuton superiority on the battlefield in the Second Unpleasantness.  For Your Information, I am now annotating "British Armour In The Normandy Campaign" by Professor John Buckley, and am now up to Page 20.  Of 218.  So, definitely a Work In Progress.  Art!

NORMANDY: The Allies do not manage to slice through the Teutons and get to Paris in 30 days after D-Day, therefore according to the Wehraboos the whole campaign is a miserable failure, because the Teutons are so awesome.

     Yes, well except for the liberation of Paris takes only 77 days, and the Teuton army, 500,000 strong, disintegrates in the process.  Art!

     Ol' Rob clarifies that what the bafunes claim to be 'stalemates' along the front in Normandy are in fact 'pauses' where the Allies stock up on supplies, bring in reinforcements, co-ordinate air support and only then resume the attack.  These always succeed in gaining ground, even if less than planned, and also continue the relentless and very lop-sided attrition of the Teuton forces.  Max Hastings comes in for a very well-deserved bashing in being positively onanistic about how wonderfully terrific and unbeatable Teuton tanks were, yet failing to mention the terrifyingly effective British (and Canadian and Polish) artillery.

     Next session: Brute Force!  Art?

Someone ten miles away is about to have a very bad day

"City In The Sky"

A mysterious and debilitating fever is wracking the inhabitants of Arcology One.

‘Doctor Davros?’ asked the worried Paramedic, having abandoned her post at the tent’s entrance.

     ‘Hmm?  Yes?’

     ‘How bad is this infection going to get?’

     Casting a look around, he sighed.

     ‘I don’t know, Liz.  It spread like crazy, took me totally by surprise, there’s nothing like it in the files and I’m a glorified GP at best, not an epidemiologist.  Nobody has died from it, at least.’

     He and the other medical staff from Lichfield, who had gone out to tackle the disease where it arose, were treating symptoms instead of finding a cure, which they were relying upon Microbiology in Harrow to create.

     “Given time.”  How much did they have!  This crisis put the entire sphere population at risk, even before they began to deal with how to get back Downstairs.  These victims, lying comatose or groaning, these were people who now had less than no hope left –

     A stumbling silhouetted figure fumbled with the tent flaps, managed to untie them and came unsteadily inside, a person wearing the silver-banded boilersuit of a Warden.  Davros recognised the sandy hair of Barclay, and that the man had the disease already.  He looked shockingly pale, dripped with sweat, stared wildly from bloodshot eyes and carried a strange, retro-looking metal cylinder.

     ‘Here,’ he grated at the device.  ‘I’m with Davros now.  Yes, he’s wearing gloves.’

     Propping himself up against one of the tent’s poles, Barclay offered the strange device to Davros, who took it with reluctance.

     Probably not a miniature boom-box.

A Splash Of Colour

Note the CORRECT SPELLING.  Thank you.  Conrad would like to put up a vessel with an unusual colour scheme, just because it's cool.  Art!

     Pretty spiffy, hmmmm?  A stark contrast to most naval vessels, which are painted in uniformly drab grey.  This is the "Bucha", an Ukrainian gunboat whose mission is to help defend Kyiv.  Note the CORRECT SPELLING.  One presumes it has this disruptive multi-colour camo scheme to blend in with the river bank landscape as it's certainly not going to be venturing out to sea.  Chudoviy!

Finally -

Not sure how to wrap this one up, apart from informing you that Pistachio Ice Cream is on the cards.  Conrad has found a recipe that used only 3 oz. of sugar, which he can cut to 1½ oz. by substituting half with Canderel.  I do need more double cream, which may well mean a trip into Lesser Sodom to see what's going cheap.  As ever, I shall let you know.

Chinchinchinnies!

*  We already knew I was a terrible person.

The First Order

No!  You Were Imagining That This Was Going To Be About

"Starz Ware" (sp?), weren't you?  Don't deny it, you're utterly transparent.  Art!

     For those unaware of the details of what is, admittedly, a minor and obscure franchise, let me inform you that the 'First Order' is a collection of extreme right-wing fanatics who wish to resurrect the old Empire that Luke, Leia and Han brought down in flames.  What a splendid bunch of chaps!  No, hang on, that's not right, I mean what a reprehensible clutch of reprobates.

     Well, you are wrong.  Art!

"THE FIRST AND LAST WORD OUT OF YOUR FILTHY SEWERS WILL BE 'SIR'!"

     This stricture, you might say, is Gunnery Sergeant Hartman's first order to the <ahem> grab-asstic pieces of excrement masquerading as Marines under his tender, loving care command.   "Full Metal Jacket" lest ye be unaware, and the only character in films who is both hilarious and terrifying at the same time.

     If you want to see a more nuanced performance by R. Lee Ermey, albeit still in a military milieu, check out  "The Boys In Company C", a rather obscure Vietnam war film that, again, takes the titular boys from training to the battlefields of South East Asia.  Art!

     ANYWAY none of this has anything to do with the real, central core of this Intro, which is  -

     Order Picking.  Yes yes yes, nowhere near the drama of space opera or bullets flying all around you yet hopefully a little more relatable.  I bet the humble life of an order picker never entered your mind when you clicked on the very latest and most chic MacGuffin on the Amazon website, did you?  Nor conjecture about how, exactly, all the contents of your Ocado get magically delivered to you?  (Because we assume you're that well-heeled that you do, indeed, shop via ocado).  Art!

I have no idea.  None.

     Conrad had a peripheral involvement in order picking when working at Sainsbo's and Footasylum, more so at the latter.  The pickers had to get orders sent in over the internet right from the get-go - the first order had to be correct, if you like (hello today's title!).  Their selection was then recorded by CCTV at the packing station, being packed, which was vital when a customer complained that their ten Kings Will Dream gilets were all missing from the package.  Art!

That place named after a river

     In fact Sainsnbo's "Wish Fulfilment Centre", as they called it, was a giant white elephant that cost so much to run they closed it down a couple of years ago.  Don't worry, it's in the same industrial park as an Amazon WFC; those made redundant just walked across the road and got a job there.

     This Intro, gentle reader - yes yes yes we're getting to it - is about another sad tale of manglement, set at a distribution centre that Original Poster left un-named.  By their account they were a low-level supervisor or manager, who appreciated the fast and accurate picking team that they had.  Art!

An order picker, picking orders

Enter manglement.  I can't use OP's term for them but it involved the Eff word and a walnut.  Said EffW decided that the order pickers were being paid too much in bonus and incentive payments, which they got for 1) Accuracy and 2) Going over quota, so - management would cut both of these out completely!  And raise the quotas!  Because nothing could possibly go wrong!

     WRONG.  The pick rates immediately fell and the (very very) angry order pickers went back to the old quota.  Did manglement realise they were onto a loser and revert to the winning status?  No.  No, they did not, or this would be a much shorter story.  Art!

OP's OPs no longer busy at work

     Instead they tried to discipline a couple of the order pickers, who promptly quit and had a job with their competitor the next day, with better pay.

     Over the next fortnight all the good crew departed - for the competitor.  Deliveries were delayed due to short staffing, orders were missed or filled incorrectly and the customers, to put it mildly, were extremely peeved at either not getting what they'd ordered or the wrong thing altogether.

     But manglement stayed strong!  The EffW came to lecture the remaining pickers and told them a bunch of temps would be coming in as replacements, because, in his immortal words, "Picking is entry level stuff".  They should have baked him a cake with that phrase in icing on the top, because - Art!

     I wonder if EffW got a bonus himself when the company ended up on the verge of bankruptcy, lost millions and had to lay off half their staff?  Because that was the end result of employing utterly inept temps without a clue about order picking.  Customers deserted the business in droves, as did the sales staff, because order picking had gone completely awry for months.  Art!

A walnut in a pickle

     This is what comes of trying to shave a few percentage points off the wage bill.

Conrad's Crossword Controversy

Welllll not that controversial in The Mansion.  Also, thank heavens for armoured underwear, as the Coincidence Hydra was gnashing it's mandibles at this point.  Art!

     I've been doing a couple of these every day, just to keep my intellect in trim, and am now well into July 2010.  The crossword layout stays the same, it's just the clues that change, although COYPU and ESSAYS do keep cropping up.  Art!

     This, of course - obviously! - is well before Chipmunk Cheeks set his beady eyes upon Krim.  You see, Peter The Average? even crosswords hate you.

A Robin At Christmas

No!  Not the chirpy red-breasted little bird, rather the acerbic and critical Australian military historian Robin, Robin Prior.  Mister Prior to you.  You recall that he was taking on the Wehraboo claim that the Teutons of Second Unpleasantness vintage were unbeatable supermen who won everywhere all the time, until they lost the war, somehow.

     Ol' Rob, having trashed the 'man-on-man' combat myth, then addressed the 'Blitzkrieg Myth'.  Art!

     

Not at all festive and we don't care!

     Ol' Rob points out that the defeat of France in 1940 came about in a mere 30 days, and that this is seen forever afterwards as the 'Gold Standard' of armoured warfare, and any campaign that doesn't succeed in 30 days or less is seen as a comparative failure, yah booh sucks.

     Except - a word you surely knew was coming - this Gold Standard was verrrry much the exception, not the rule.  It wasn't replicated by the Teutons in North Africa or the Sinister Union.  In fact it works only once, against a French army that was poorly led and which didn't fight well*.

"City In The Sky"

The Doctor - Davros in this case, not our favourite Gallifreyan - is doing a bit of medical detective work.

A big step to take, declaring a curfew.  It had happened only once before, when they’d had the micro-meteorite breach, because shutting down movement choked off fifty per cent of activity.  Food, repairs, livestock, water, crops, medicine, they all needed to get about by foot now that there was almost no other transport left.

     What could have caused this infection!

     He blindly walked over to an empty bed and sat on it, making the bamboo frame creak.

     Think.  Think like a doctor and a scientist.

     Doctor John Smith and Ace were unlikely suspects.  They’d visited before, without the slightest effect.  Terry – ah, now he was a possible Patient Zero. 

     Except he’d been DCTM’d by Doctor Smith before arriving here.  The young man had been kept in the common area at Lichfield with the Founders and had gone straight from there to Broughton, where he was now soundly asleep.  This debilitating disease had broken out at five different townships scattered across the sphere, one after another.  So how could he be responsible?

     The micro-organism responsible couldn’t be airborne, or the infected would be spread evenly across the inner sphere and both he and Paramedic Prakasz would have contracted it by now.  On the other hand, if it spread by contact, how on earth did it get to so many places that Terry didn’t visit?

    Remind me what 'DCTM'd' means, dear author?  Ah!  'Decontaminated;.

I Quite Forgot

Boxing Day is an excursion for the extended family to go bowling, especially now that Covideviltry is out of the way.  Conrad is a pretty average bowler, apart from being able to whiz the ball with a lot of oomph, which scares the skittles into falling over.  Art!

     Look for me under "Rob" - my Sunday-best moniker, which I take out and polish occasionally.  As you can see, either I did really well or everyone else was rubbish <delete where applicable>.

* Says Robin.  Any complaints, take it up with him.