A Gentille Giant 3-Ply Of Lies

I Thought I'd Ramp It Up From A Mere "Tissue"

Forgive me if you've never heard of the kitchen towel mentioned in today's title. I hadn't either; it came up when I Googled for 'toughest kitchen towel evah'.  Art!

     Pretty obviously this is not a pack of kitchen towels.  Congratulations, pass Go, get £200 and a brownie point.  Putting up a pack of paper in cylindrical form is not guaranteed to bring in passing blog traffic.  I'm not saying a tank will, either, but it's a safer bet.  Note that this is the Mk. I Crusader, and they've taken the stupid miniature turret mounting a machine gun from the port front hull, which by rumour was likely to asphyxiate the gunner due to trapped cordite fumes if he dared to fire the thing.  Not onl

     ANYWAY what I want to lead with in this Intro maaaay be considered Politics, except I will argue that it's in fact Crime, even if at times it's hard to distinguish the two.  Oooooh, get Conrad being all controversial.  Art!

His mouth is open ergo he is lying

     Meet George Santos, who holds the unenviable record of being only the sixth Representative to be expelled from the South Canadian Congress, and three of those six were expelled in 1861 for backing the Confederates.  The last one was in 2000 for a whole litany of crimes, the one before that in 198-something.

     Interestingly enough, he hasn't yet been convicted of a crime - because the wheels of justice grind slooooowly - and got kicked out on his behind thanks to the House Ethics Committee, who seem to have found him an entirely ethics-free zone.  Art!

This comes up if you Google "ethics vacuum"

     Mister Santosspot getting kicked out of Congress is a measure of how much his own party hates him and wanted him gone, because - okay, this is now edging into Politics, I admit it, sue me if you don't like it - of the voting balance in the House.  Art!

     You may omit this next paragraph if you're not keen on Politics.
     

     The Wizzard Lizard Gizards had a majority of just 4 - and there's a whole other Intro to be written about that - after their mid-term elections.  Thus Speaker Kevin McCarthy didn't want to rock the boat or trim this slender majority by doing anything about Santosh.  Well, that majority has now been trimmed by one, which tells you how detested the man was.  Not only that, Kevin McCarthy, having been deposed as Speaker (it took FIFTEEN votes for him to get the post!) is throwing his toys out of the pram and retiring in 2024.  Majority thus cut to two.  Not only that, Matt "Eddie Munster" Gaetz is beginning to sweat about the House Ethics Committee investigating him, because he is a sack of excrement in human shape.  Both those mentioned above are members of the Wizzard Lizard Gizard party, just to be clear.  Art!

Matt Gaetz.  Close enough.

     ANYWAY I was going to detail most of Santos' crimes currently recorded.  I began making a few notes on them last night and - well, let Art make my point for me.

     This is just a hasty scribbled outline.  Were I to continue with this plonker's list of criminal endeavours I'd need a whole Expel spreadsheet.  Ha!  Do you s - O you do.  Heck, we're already nearly half-way to Count.  Definitely tomorrow, though.

Were I To Say "Oil" -

You'd probably hide under the blankets, pull the sheets around your head, stick your fingers in your ears and shout "LA LA LA NOT LISTENING TO YOU".  Yes, well, that's because you're peculiar.  Art!

     Sunflower oil.  You may remember after the commencement of the Special Idiotic Operation that supermarket shelves emptied of this particular product, because it's one of Ukraine's most important exports, and all shipments of sunflower seeds were blocked.

     No longer.  Conrad did check labels before buying; this one comes from France, and the other branded bottles alongside came from the EU.  What you might call another quiet victory.

More Oils Than You Realised Existed

SIT BACK DOWN!  No, this is not going to be a lecture on petrogeology, mostly because I don't know the first thing about it, and mainly because I happened to wonder about the comic character Olive Oyl.  Art!

     This is as most of you know her.  Originally in the comics she was a bit of a feisty scrapper, who did not get on with Popeye when they first met.  Imagine that!

     She comes from a family of oils, to wit: her brother, Castor Oyl; her father Cole Oyl; her mother, Cylinda Oyl (bit weak, that one); uncles Otto Oyl and Lubry Kent Oyl.  Art!

The resemblance is uncanny

     No relatives named Primrose Oyl, as far as I can see.

     We now return you to our normal scheduled whiffle.

"City In The Sky"

The Doctor is counselling caution on the part of the 'coasties', because they're up against an implacable alien foe with absolutely no scruples.

     ‘Ah!  Good question!  I don’t know.  I suspect there may be more.  Coasties!  Please keep an eye open for people who behave like Ben – unable to converse properly or fit into the townships.’

     ‘You can’t pick on all the Wanderers.  There’s hundreds of them!’ objected a speaker in the audience – that doctor from the sanitarium who’d kept an eye on Alex.

     ‘Oh, these ones will stand out,’ replied the Doctor, drolly.  ‘They won’t wash.  They won’t go out in the rain.  They will not eat and they most certainly won’t ever, ever drink.’

      To tie matters up, the Doctor warned everyone present that rash, impetuous action against these aliens would be disastrous.  They had killed billions already, directly or indirectly, and dealing with an army of barely-armed people from the coastal communities would present them with no greater problem than a man killing an insect with a fly-swatter.

     There had been complaints, inevitably.  Inaction after such earth-shaking revelations didn’t sit easily with the coasties.

     ‘Oh, don’t worry.  I have my own fly-swatter in waiting.  Look to the oceans in the next forty-eight hours and be ready to move.’

     The words “fly-swatter” were spoken in a tone that carried such menace that there were no questions.  Alex felt impressed and not a little awed that the small man could invest such an inoccuous phrase with enough gravitas to still the lively questions of the Australians.

     Hmmm one wonders just what this 'fly-swatter' is.  More - much more - than a piece of mesh on a handle, I suspect.

At The Benito Lounge

It's a long drive to Chorlton, where the Benito Lounge is located, yet worth it if one is seeking out gluten-free menus that still have an interesting choice.  This is where the folks congregated for both a late and early birthday meal, Darling Daughter's having been on the 19th and Wonder Wifey's being on the 22nd.  Art!

Tom and DD with Christmas jumpers

My Lamb Shwarma flatbread

     And those are the others, which aren't important enough to bother describing.  I think Tom had a Truffly Dead Chicken On A Plate, or somesuch, which I would describe as a redundant recipe because one does not expect to chase a live fowl around the tables in order to dine upon it.

     O hang on - just found the dishes scribbled upon a piece of paper provided by Degsy.  Art!

     You can figure out which is which.  Not my job.

Finally -

I should explain that I'm typing this up during the early afternoon, as I'm using up one of the 2.5 days of leave that Your Humble Scribe has accumulated since starting as a full-timer with G4S.  Next Friday I have half the day off, but neglected to define which half before finishing work yesterday afternoon, so shall have to clarify this on the 28th, when I'm back on the nose-grindstone interface again.  Also to note today is day 26 of being Dry For December as I began on 27th November, go me.  I think it's fair to have a tipple on the 31st in the evening. it being New Year's Eve and all that.

     Toodles!