Being Stand Offish

Once Again, Mister Ambiguity, Meet Gentle Reader

I need to caution you that we are going to be mixing in a few military themes in this Intro, so if all you want to read about are fluffy bunnies and sparkly rainbows, I have to wonder why you're reading a blog obsessed with tanks, zombies and atom bombs.  Art!

     Here we have Happy Harry, as nobody ever imagined nor called him, who is pretty much the definition of standoffish, which is to say cold and unsocial.  I haven't seen this iteration of "The Stand" so am not sure how well this actor nails it, yet I wanted both the character and the novel's name.

     Then we have the Cold War derivation, where "Stand Off" was applied to ordnance launched, fired or dropped from an aircraft that enabled it to hit a target, whilst remaining outside the range of defensive SAMs, radar and guns.  Art!

Big Ugly Fat Fella manifesting Hound Dogs

     Believe me, if those got launched, the crying would come to an abrupt stop.  The 'Hound Dog', or AGM-28 to be less canonically canine about it, was intended to be launched from it's aerial platform, and hit Sinister air defence networks and systems, obliterating them with a 1 megaton warhead.  This would effectively punch an enormous hole in the collective air defences of the Sinister Union, allowing other B52s packing lots more shorter-ranged nuclear ordnance to reign, or rain, o'er the Sinister Union.  Don't think ill of South Canada, the Sinisters had their own equivalents*.  Art!

HD with puny humans for scale

     Back to  more prosaic matters, which Alexander Pope called 'Bathos', despite the name not being anything to do with balneomaniacs.  You may, if you are lucky, get that sentence explained more thoroughly in the near future.  As it is, let me introduce a specimen of Allied tank as seen in the North-Western theatre of war during the Second Unpleasantness.  Art!

     Yes, these chaps are welding a frame onto their tank in order to be able to stack a layer of sandbags around the entire hull front and sides.  Other tankers were known to use logs, or concrete.

     "Why so?" I hear you ask, and I thought you'd never query!

     Because of the Monroe Effect, I have to say.  Art!

Art!

     O Dog Buns, has he gotten a pash for another B & W femme fatale?  Hang on, let me just adjust the horizontal gain a tad - there, that should do it.  Art!

     Perfidious Albion discovered the Monroe Effect during the Second Unpleasantness, and used it in anti-tank weapons such as the bazooka and PIAT.  So, too, did the Teutons, with their ubiquitous Panzerfaust being doled out to every other stubble-hopper in their armies.  Art!

     The idea with weapons like this is that they have a 'sweet-spot', this being the distance from the armour they are fired at where the warhead detonates - or, being more technical, the 'stand off distance'.  Beyond this distance and the 10,000ºC plasma jet disperses and merely creates a scorch mark; below this distance and - Art!

     "No jet".  The hideous irony with ad-hoc tank protection like sandbags or logs or track links is that they may well allow an enemy shaped-charge warhead to detonate at precisely the right stand-off distance.  Allied technical officers swore horribly about this impromptu shielding, as it increased the tank's weight considerably, over-strained the suspension, caused engine problems and affected reliability.

     We have seen more recent examples of tank crews practicing stand-off improvisations.  Art!

     This might well, again, create the ideal stand-off distance for drone attacks to have the most efficient Explosively-Formed Penetrator effect.  It also heightens the tank's profile and width, making it easier to spot.  Well done, Ruffia - you have just re-invented the A7V!  Art?

     One has to recall the incessant Ruffian use of 'cope cages' since Day One of the Special Idiotic Operation, and how they were great as a barbecue, yet completely useless as a defensive measure.

     Dog Buns, it's been raining heavily at the exact moment I was due to take Edna trotties.  Give me five minutes and I'll see if Ham The Weather Wizard cannot be importuned to clear the skies -

"Siege"

I thought I'd update you as to the state of the game, which I am playing against myself, which is conducive to not cheating, for that way lies madness.  Art!

     At North you can see the Siege Tower moving into close contact with the battlements, meaning the assaulters can now storm the castle walls.  The scaling ladder alongside the ST and the one at lower starboard have now allowed Sir Wulfric's men onto the battlements, and at the breach his men are pushing back Sir Ralph's defenders.

     I have learned that it's unwise to have character counters in hexes behind counters in the front line, because any retreat is blocked and your characters die instead.  Also, perhaps I should have stuck all the bowmen in one position instead of spreading them about?

     This game is a variety of Finding Out, the next one ought to be more finely balanced.

Midnight Complain To Georgia

It's all kicking off in the Trans-Caucasus!  In the nation of Georgia, vast crowds of demonstrators have been out on the streets for the past two weeks, protesting about their government passing Ruffian-friendly laws, especially the most recent one, which demonises anyone who isn't waving the Ruffian flag and lauding Peter The Average.  Art!

     They have been assaulted by riot police with shields and batons, tear-gassed, water-cannoned and rubber-bulleted, and they still come back for more in their thousands if not tens of thousands.  <coughcoughColumbiaCough>.

     This bears watching, the Georgian populace do not seem to like their government very much and the only thing the authorities can do now is escalate, which is the slippery spiral path to a civil war - see 'Myanmar' for reference.

     In years and decades past, the Kremlin would intervene on behalf of it's proxies, except it's now got it's hands full elsewhere.

"City In The Sky"

The scouts are now reporting back about what they've seen and found in the Australian outback.

     Standing sentry over the embers of a dying bonfire were three South Australian Police and a couple of couriers, all swapping tales of the incredible events taking place across the Bight.  A football-sized lump of clay had been rolled out of the fire, and one of the couriers was preparing to batter it apart when he caught sight of the approaching threesome.

     ‘Hey now!’ he blurted.  ‘Here’s trouble.’

     ‘That’s Doctor Smith?’ asked a courier, nodding at Captain Kirwin.  One of the SAP gave him a good-natured cuff over the head.

     ‘You nork!  That’s the Yank, from Upstairs.  The other beaut is Ace.  Doctor Smith has an umbrella, like I said.’

     ‘Plus a pet dingo,’ observed another courier.  Ace slapped herself across the forehead.  Typical!  She’d forgotten the really important thing.

     ‘Listen,’ she told the dingo.  ‘Get your pack away from that – that – from those lizards.’

     The dingo barked enthusiastically, pawing at the dry earth.

     ‘I mean it!’ emphasised Ace.  ‘That place is going to get blammed, major league blammed if I know the Prof.’

     The American saw what others might have missed.  She did, after all, regard dingoes as a novelty to be closely studied.  The creature’s “pawing” in the dust had created a wavy outline sprouting short sticklike appendages.

     ‘Ace!’ she gasped, gripping the other woman’s upper bicep like a pincer.  ‘That damn dog has drawn one of the aliens!’

     You  didn't think I meant only Hom. Sap. scouts did you?

Talking Of Snakes ...

Welllll the Lithoi are lizards with a distinct snake-y feel to them.  You may recall that, a couple of weekends ago, Your Modest Artisan betook himself over the Snake Pass to darkest Sheffield, to take part in Richard's annual 'Crisis Point' extravaganza.

     The Snake Pass is well named, as it consists of uncountable bends and twists in the road all the way from the top-most moors to the valley bottom.  Not only do drivers have to contend with sheep - which, to be honest, are so used to cars passing a mere 6" from them on the verge that they don't so much as shimmy - but also problems of terrain.  Art!

     This is the kind of road problem one encounters, especially that one to starboard.  Conrad didn't then have the time or angle to take a photo, but this is one of those bottlenecks along the valley road, with one-way light-controlled traffic.  One presumes a new road surface will be laid, after they buttress the downhill slope with gabions and fascines to prevent future erosion or collapse.

Finally -

The rains have ceased - time for trotties.

*  Perfidious Albion's 'V' bomber force were expected to get into the Sinister Union by stunt-flying at rooftop height.

Mincing

Yes, It's An Ambiguous Title

Come on, are you surprised?  A straight line is the shortest route between two points, and is also the most boring one, which is why we here at BOOJUM! feel free to oscillate wildly* between different viewpoints, often in the same paragraph.

     So! you might interpret today's title as meaning those who walk with small steps or effeminately, and - you'd be wrong.  Art!

The Brain from Louvain

    Whilst talking of French, or Walloon in Belgium, this is where 'Mincing' ultimately derives from: "Mincier", meaning "To diminish" and transmuted over time into cutting things up into small pieces, such as the length of one's stride, as with Hercule above.  Conrad, with Size 11 feet and 6' 1" in height, is never going to be able to mince, although he can trip over his own leg ends on occasion.  Art!

After

Before

     Indisputably a lot smaller, nicht wahr?  Now, having delivered a picture of minced meat, we then come to the topic of mincemeat, which is not the same at all.  O noes.  Art!

     This is mincemeat, which of course - obviously! - contains no meat at all in it's present form.  Waaaaay back in the fourteenth century it had a lot of minced beef in it, alongside the currants, sugar, almonds, peel and spices.  Over the centuries the meat content dwindled, until there is only beef suet present (what looks like rice grains in the above photo).

     Here an aside.  Before the diagnosis, Your Humble Scribe could easily sit down and polish off a whole six-pack of mince pies, followed up by a whole Christmas pudding with brandy butter and a nice big slice of Christmas cake <eyes glaze over in sucrose-induced haze>.

     ANYWAY that has nothing to do with what I'm typing about now on the night of 30th April 2024, if only posting on 1st May 2024.  Art!

     Yes, that is a corpse.  He is wearing the uniform of an officer in the Royal Marines, and his body washed up on the Mediterranean coastline of Phalangist Spain during the Second Unpleasantness, together with a briefcase full of Top Secret documents, on 30th April 1943.  The documents were copied and passed on to the resident Teuton Abwehr agents in Spain, who in turn passed them on to Berlin.  The documents contained tangential confirmation that the Allies were planning to invade both Sardinia and Greece, with only a token feint attack on Sicily.  Defenders were allocated to the two former destinations, with Sicily being neglected.  Art!

Psych!

     IT WAS ALL A CON.

     There never was a 'Major Martin' of the Royal Marines.  The body was that of a civilian suicide victim, who was dressed to look the part.  His pockets and wallet were filled with incidental impedimenta, to fill out the background story.  His body was carried in a refrigerated compartment aboard the submarine HMS Seraph, until cast adrift in the small hours of 30th April.  The British embassy in Spain was sent supposedly 'Urgent' messages about recovering the body and briefcase, which the Spaniards intercepted and decoded.  Art!

     How effective was Operation MINCEMEAT?  Well, it convinced the Teutons if not the Romans, and ensured attention at the very least was split between three targets, two of which were bogus.  Thus Operation HUSKY, the actual invasion of Sicily, was unopposed at sea and in the air.  So, MINCEMEAT helped in the invasion, yet it wasn't the war-winning wonder wiffle that it has been made to appear after the Second Unpleasantness.

     You can take a couple of things away from this tale: firstly, that Perfidious Albion can be quite ruthless in pursuit of it's goals, and secondly that people mistake a talent at cricket for being effete popinjays, because the British also invented and play rugby.

     

Whilst On The Military Theme

You may be aware of Al Murray as a comedian, playing the role of Pub Landlord up and down This Sceptred Isle, and indeed Conrad has a DVD of exactly that.

     However - that word again! - Al is actually a graduate of Oxford University, with a degree in Modern History, and is one half of the podcast team "We Have Ways -" alongside proper historian James Holland.  He has a keen interest in all things Second Unpleasantness and has only just put up this picture on Twitter.  Art!

     Why would he be worried about having mislaid or lost it?  Because it's a modern classic that doesn't appear to have been reprinted since the Seventies, if that.  Art!

     This is the LOWEST priced volume on Abebooks.  Art!

     This is the cheapest on E-Bay.  Plus, £10 P & P for a small paperback book?  Someone is taking the mickey.  If I'm paying that much for it they'd better send it by unicorn courier covered by a squadron of Hawkmen and escorted by Challenger 2s, thank you very much.

I Told You, It's A Scamble

Coinrad - do you see wh O you do - is referring, as if you cannot guess, to crypto-currency, which had a bad year in 2023, thanks to Sam Bankman-Fried, and what a gift of a middle name.

     ANYWAY I have news of another crypto-crook who is now paying the price for running the money-launderers favourite kind of specie.  Art!

     This is CZ, who has also been hit with a $4.3 billion fine.  Apparently he completely and deliberately ignored counter-money laundering measures and protocols, in order to get as much $$$ as quickly as possible.  It worked, as he is said to be worth $33 billion.  Yeah, well, that still wasn't enough to keep you out of the clink, mate.  If he has any sense he'll vanish into obscurity once he gets out of gaol.

"City In The Sky"

Our terrestrial spies have seen enough.

     Within an hour Ace witnessed two more Lithoi casualties; one, splashed by a tractor, went berserk and danced around in writhing circles before a cluster of other aliens lasered it apart.  The second lasered itself apart after crawling into a shallow puddle concealed by the platform’s shadow.

     ‘They really, really can’t stand water,’ she murmured to Kirwin.  ‘Listen, I’d better call the Doctor.  He’ll need to know about what they’re building.’

     At that point Kirwin decided that the platform constituted a launch site for missiles.

     ‘Gotta be,’ she said to Ace and dingo.  To Ace it looked like an inverted wire basket, with cabling, but she passed on the warning to her travelling companion, who sternly forbade them to carry out anything dramatic and in fact to head back to New Eucla and his collection of party favours.

     The trio waited until dark before heading back, their dingo escort happy to lead them for an occasional reward of jelly-baby.  They finally arrived at the township’s outskirts near mid-day, tired, dirty, dusty and thirsty.  Kirwin had lost her slight stoop of the day before, and had gained an appreciation of how big her new home was.

     ‘Back on Washington you’re never more that six minutes walk from anywhere else.  Down here – I mean, we’ve been walking for hours!’

     It's a big country**.

Finally -

You what?  Art!

     Is the organiser drunk, drugged or both?  "Western vehicles" might stretch to what you see in this picture if you allow those to do lifting as heavy as the background crane.  Art!

     Compare the two.  That second one is a Teuton Marder II of the Second Unpleasantness, a tank-destroyer based on the Czech Pz38t chassis, armed believe it or not, with a Sinister 76 mm high-velocity gun.  The Teutons captured thousands of them and put them to use, as they were always short of kit.

     Did the Ruffians steal it out of the Kherson Museum that they looted before running away?  Because I can't think of any other reason it's going to be displayed.

*  The Smiths reference for you there.

**  Classic Western reference for you there.  Also the band.

A Spanner Darkly

NO!  That Is Not A Typo!

Good lord aloft, here we are after over 10 years <winces slightly at this total> of blogging and you still cannot understand that the English language dances to Conrad's sneer of cold command.  If it is spelled thus then that is deliberate.  I also have to over-ride Blogger's South Canadian spell-checker, which highlights words it doesn't like, such as 'Labour' or 'Colour' or 'British Victories In The Revolutionary War'.

     ANYWAY Conrad can read your minds, and can tell you're expecting a screed about Philip K. Dick's "A Scanner Darkly", his often darkly comic tale about future drug abuse and detection.  Art!

     The film is a weird and wonderful Rotoscoped animation that, perhaps, best  captures Ol' Phil's paranoid, drug-fuelled, gadget-laden Weltanschaung like no other.

     Of course - obviously! - that has absolutely nothing to do with today's Intro, which is where we got nuts.  Art!

Not the edible kind

     This tale centres (NOTE CORRECT SPELLING) around wrenches, which, for your information, are defined as: "A spanner, esp. one with adjustable jaws" so the title is justified.

     Now for another sorry tale of Manglement.  Are we sitting comfortably?

     Okay, imagine a light engineering firm, with about 35 employees, where OP has been working for almost 5 years.  The owner was a stingy sod who wouldn't provide two types of wrench used at all workstations, so OP went out and bought them - 20 in total.  Total expenditure about $100.  Art!

     There was no reimbursement forthcoming, so OP took them all home and spray-painted them lime green, as evidence that they were OP's property.

     So far, so pound-wise penny-foolish.  Where the real manglement came in is when the owner hired his sister to work for him.  She was a spiteful, hateful, obnoxious, petty person who probably passed the port to the right as well, so he simply had to place her in HR.

     Ooops.

    One-third of the employees left within the space of two months, as her reputation preceded her, and not in any good way.  Art!

     The business then had to scramble to find new employees, whose positions were advertised at $5 per hour above existing employees.  That's how desperate they were, and it went down like a Blue-Ringed Octopus in a jacuzzi.  Thus, OP and the only other two remaining long-term employees went to HR to bargain for an hourly raise.

     Owner's sister immediately fired them.  How this would cope with being very short-staffed is anyone's guess, but it probably gave Bokebag Sister a short power trip.  OP, too, took a short trip, to collect all their personal possessions - including all the lime green wrenches - before leaving.  Art!

     As you might expect, firing the only remaining long-term employees who knew how to do everything, and whom had been running departments in lieu of management, backfired wonderfully.  Boakbag Sister also sicced (I believe this is the correct term) the police on OP for stealing all the lime green wrenches, in a case that rapidly went nowhere since OP still had the receipts.  So, the owner either had to suffer production loss or replace all 20 wrenches, and after 5 years they'd cost a lot more than $100.

     But hist! for the tale is a long way from over.

     Bokebag Sister also ignored the state's requests for information about OP's unemployed status, which is a legal obligation upon businesses in South Canada when they fire a person.  Stick a pin in this one.  Art!

     OP, and presumably those other two fired employees, were flooded with frantic, despairing e-mails from the owner about How To Do This, and How To Order That, because he had no idea, his Bokebag Sister had no idea, and none of the remaining new hires knew anything about anything.

     Nor was that all.  HR at the business (I got tired of typing out "Boakbag Sister") dragged their feet about providing statutory information to the State Labour Board, who then imposed a hefty fine for what OP called 'file stuffing', which I think means providing data compressed into incomprehensibility, and failing to provide evidentiary information.  No number given, so we shall assume $5,000 each.

     The business still had to pay all three employees employment benefit.  Guessing again, say $5,000 for three people over six months.  Art!

     Then comes the cherry orchard on top.  OP's case worker from the SLB gave them advice on how to sue the business for both unpaid leave not taken when fired, and for wrongful termination to boot.  The state did the prosecution so it cost OP $0, and they won.  Presumably legal constraints prevented them from gleefully posting the total, but it was a 'tidy sum', which Conrad has checked up on, and the lower bound is $5,000 (that sum again!) going up to $40,000.  We shall go for the middle ground and guess at $20,000.  Once again, add in the other two fired employees, because Conrad cannot see OP not telling them what they'd been up to in court.

     What's the damage?   Our BOOJUM! guesstimate come out at $85,000 and, although it might have been less, it might equally have been a lot more.

     There was no news about the business going under, so it very likely survived, if in straitened circumstances, and possibly with new HR.  After all, you don't want to employ a person who throws a wrench in the works.

     Or, as I think OP is female, a wench in the works*.

Mister Clumsy Strikes Again

<sigh> I just dropped a plate and my 'Callan' mug after walloping my tray into the bannisters and now both are in bits.  I even had to hoover the hallway to avoid leaving sharp pieces of chipped enamel, because if Edna scraped her tootsies trotting up and down, Your Humble Scribe would also be getting scraped, mostly off the kitchen floor.

     That's not all.  I managed to knock my table lamp onto the floor and - Art!

     It still functions as you can see, and no, that gaping hole twixt base and socket ought not to be there.  Memo to self: get a new lightbulb on Wednesday's big shop.

     These both during the entirely abstemious month of April.

The Haul

Conrad has bought three more books, hurrah! and may even keep one of them.  Art!

     There should have been another, David Lister's "Defeating the Panzer-Stuka Menace" about British spigot weapons of the Second Unpleasantness, HOWEVER (and not in a good way) Abebooks notified me that it was suddenly unavailable, so I shall have to look out for a re-order.  Art!

Grrrrrr

     As for what I did get, TTK is one of the works in Professor John Buckley's biblio in "Monty's Men", which is recommendation enough.  It's not all Allied accounts, either, and even includes a chapter on the Romanian army of the Second Unpleasantness.  Yes, they fought in the SE, on the Eastern Front.

     "Valedictory" is a novel, based on real events, and rather encapsulates the bitterness felt by a lot of Poles about their country being sold down the river after the Second Unpleasantness ended.  Yes, well, it's rather hard to argue with the Red Army when it's camped out in occupation on the other side of Occupied Germany and the cons <Cont. Page 94>

     "Feed" is the first part of a trilogy, which already means Conrad is looking at it with suspicion.  If you can't wrap up a simple story in 600 pages then your editor is a lazy waffle-bottom.  We shall see.

"City In The Sky"

Ace and Kirwin are lying-up, spying on the Lithoi's base-ship and seeing what frantic activity is going on.

The wavering image came into focus, revealing a giant grey mushroom humping up over the plains, concealed by a vast plastic cover.  Slinking silver shapes moving painfully slowly proved to be the Lithoi, covered against Earth’s weather, moving to and around a spindly metal construction being erected out beyond the canopy that overlaid their base.  Small motorised tractors also helped shift materials from a cavernous doorway in the base, moving as slowly as the alien lizards.

     Rather than work on the platform themselves, the aliens allowed their tractors to do the manual handling, carrying, laying and slotting metal components together.  One tractor slowly skirted the hexagonal platform, putting up tall plastic poles at each corner, until another concealing plastic canopy could be hauled over them.

     Kirwin took over observation, in time to see one of the Lithoi tugging at a corner of the plastic cover over the platform; a stream of mud or water came dripping off the shroud from where it had been lying on damp ground and played all over the alien, which went rigid before keeling over.  Only when another Lithoi used a tractor to haul the limp body away did Kirwin realise the paralysed lizard had died of shock brought on by exposure to water. 

     You can see why they kept well clear of This Sceptred Isle.

Finally -

People have been pestering as to what happened to the latest Motley.  Art!

     I hope that satisfies.

*  Sorry not sorry.

Keystone Chops

NO!  No, That Is Not A Typo!

Jovus Tapdancing Grudd On A Petrol-Powered Pogo-stick, am I not skilled in the English language?  If the title is spelled like that then the spelling is deliberate.  DELIBERATE!  

     I suppose I shall now have to explicate about the "Keystone Cops", because they are probably a little obscure by now in terms of popular culture, having come out of the black-and-white silent era.  Their glory years were from 1912 to 1917.  Art!

     Here is one ensemble, as they used to have various comic actors take a role; above to starboard you can see Fatty Arbuckle.  The KCs onscreen were hilariously incompetent slapstick idiots, who would always manage to slip on the banana skin, tread on the rake or fall down the open manhole.  Art!

     Studios back in the early years of film were quite cavalier with stunts and safety, and what you see above is probably exactly what it looks like, with the actors/stuntmen holding on grimly above a sheer drop.  Art!

What they ought to have done here is shoot it in reverse, with the car being dragged backwards by cables, and the tram moving away from it.  This would have been expensive and time-consuming so they just winged it for real.

     Of course this has nothing to do with the rest of this Intro, Conrad was just introducing the concept of a 'Keystone', because why use a single sentence when fifty will do?

     ANYWAY, let us bring in an architectural drawing.  Art!

     You can see how important to an arch's integrity a keystone is, since it forms the final structural element that holds all the other curving masonry in place.  No keystone, no arch.  Certainly not in anywhere remotely prone to earthquakes.
     Thus we come to another tale of South Canadian manglement.  Don't worry, all will become clear.  Art!

     I Googled 'Non-lethal weapons' and this array came up.  Note our old friend the caltrop to centre port.  A few of these look extremely lethal, to be honest.
      This little lot is relevant because Original Poster worked at a small company of thirty workers, that won a contract to make a non-lethal police weapon, which they were cautiously and coyly careful to not categorise.

     They did explain that the two brothers who owned the business were wont to give management jobs to family members who were in no way equipped to do them.  Family members, it seems, who would have a hard time walking and breathing at the same time.  Manglement, in other words.

     Anti-Castor & Pollux (them being the opposite of the Heavenly Twins) appointed a family member as the business's Scheduling Manager, their principal qualification being that they knew absolutely sweet Fanny Adams about schedules.  Art!

This is a Yule Shed.  "Shed Yule".   You know, how South Canadians pronounce - O I give up

     Yule Shed Expert promptly sacked one worker for wanting two weeks leave, and a team leader because they objected to the ridiculous work schedules being put out.

     Two people having got the chop.  Keep a five-bar gate of this metric.

     When OP, the process expert, was asked to quantify how many Non-Lethal Weapons could be produced per diem.  They said 100, which would still leave them time to work on all their other products.  Yule Shed Expert promptly ordered OP and their team to make 200 per day, keep up with all the other products and not to dare do overtime.  Whilst now being two people down.  Art!

     Inevitably, a backlog developed, which meant Yule Shed Expert came shrieking at OP, complaining about <insert drivel here> cats and dogs living together.

     "What about the Key -" I hear you quibble.

     PATIENCE! we're getting there.  OP was looking at a backlog of thirty-eight hours work on the NLWs, with only eight hours to work on them.  They explained, a tad sarkily, that they were limited by the time-space continuum and couldn't physically do the work.

     So - YSE fired them on the spot for being a smartbottom.

     Three people down.

     How this would remedy the backlog is anyone's question, and the other employees did not like OP, who had been there for ages, getting the heave-ho in such cavalier fashion.  So, by the end of the week five more employees had walked, without giving notice.  South Canadian management like being able to fire people on the spot, which is mostly legal in all states, but the corollary is that employees can also quit on the spot, which manglement tends to bitch and moan about.

     Eight people down.

     OP doesn't specify what date this sacking happened, so we can guess perhaps mid-year.

     By the end of the month another ten people had left.

     Eighteen people down.

     By year end nearly all the original thirty staff had left, meaning that the business had to contend with a shortage of staff, an increasing backlog of orders, unhappy customers and the need to hire new staff and train them whilst dealing with the above.  OP was informed that the manglement got worse over this period.  Art!

     Two years after OP being sacked the business went bankrupt.

     NOW do you see the importance of a keystone worker and what happens when an incompetent nincompoop gives them the chop?

Special K

By which Conrad means the continuing economic saga of Ruffian woe and despond as related by Big Konstantin Samoilov.  We move beyond simple demographics and into wider economic matters.

     As he relates, Ruffia is now effectively locked into an arms race with the global West (which includes Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand), which is running at unsustainable levels in Ruffia, where one-third of the annual budget is now devoted to war production.  Art!

     The West is also ramping up production, to as much as 2.5%, which is easily sustainable and can outstrip Ruffia if even more is invested.

     Konstantin's predictions (remember, this guy is a certified accountant and economist and knows whereof he speaks): 

1)  People will get poorer.  Inflation is increasing, so the official line is to ignore it.  Interest rates have been stuck at 16% for ages.  The ruble is depreciating despite massive interventions to prop it up.  Art!

Ruffian petrol prices 2024

2)  More catastrophes!  Over the winter, 40 Ruffian cities declared emergencies.  These were disasters with utilities.  Now, in the rainy season, we are seeing floods.  In summer it will be fires.  The Ministry of Emergency Situations, that would deal with these Biblical plagues, is understaffed.  Art!

Come home to a real fire - live in a Ruffian forest!

3)  No Reserves.  The National Wealth Fund will run out in 4 months, after which the state is simply going to print money, thus stoking inflation, and the end of war with Ukraine will trigger a decades-long recession.  Big K countered the rosy International Monetary Fund predictions about growth because they just accept whatever Ruffian government data they are supplied with.  Professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld has pointed this glaring stupidity out, too.

     Perhaps the most worrying numbers for Peter The Average are the projected Ruffian demographics for the year 2100, where the current population of 140 million has shrunk to 67 million.

     Still, vodka sales are through the roof.  Silver linings and all that.

An Unfortunate Truth

Last year Conrad was rooting for the Ground-Launched Small-Diameter Bomb, a cheap yet accurate and long-ranged missile system developed by Saab and Boeing, of which great things were expected.  Art!

     It seems to have been a dismal failure in Ukraine.  For one, the Ruffians have apparently been able to jam it's GPS systems.  Their operators were not well-trained in their use, and maintenance issues have bedevilled them.  The Ukes tested a few close to their front lines to see if they worked, and after that - nothing.

     O well.  BOOJUM! could have kept quiet about this, but we have a reputation to live down to.

"City In The Sky"

Ace and Captain Kirwin are scouting for aliens.  And finding them!

     ‘How hot does it get?  It must be at least sixty degrees already,’ she asked shortly before noon.

     Taking pity on her, Ace stopped them for a couple of hours whilst they swigged a bottle of water each and their dingo escort panted in the shadows.  Ace then had to explain about wind, and why shadows moved over time, and what dust was.

     Eventually they moved off, dingo leading.  It took the rest of the day to reach what the Captain called a “lying-up” position; a suitable shallow dip in the ground with enough cover from scrubby sedge to conceal them from inquisitive eyes.  At this distance the Lithoi base could only be seen via binoculars, and the captain had an impressive high-tec digital pair that she let Ace look through.  Not only that, she produced a small telescopic tripod from her rucksack and set the binoculars up on them.

     ‘It’ll keep our view steady and focussed,’ she said.  ‘You take a look. This is all new to me!’

     Ace peered into the unfamiliar instrument, seeing the distant landscape overlaid with a glowing green grid, and flickering numbers that indicated distance.

     The prosaic and not-so-prosaic.

I Object, Your Honour

Conrad came across this sidebar on the browser yesteryon - Art!

     This is a still from "Chopping Mall", which is indeed very cheesy, and you know exactly what you're going to get from the title alone, so you can't call it unexpectedly void of value.

     However - Art!

     I OBJECT!  This is a cult classic in every sense of the word - how many other films feature Thomas Pynchon's "Yoyodyne" as a location? - without any negative aspects.  Cinemablend, you are on notice <eyes Remote Nuclear Detonator>.

Finally -

The whole weekend has gone by and I've not played another turn of "Siege", which I shall have to remedy.  It's not looking good for Sir Ralphs, we have to say; Sir Wulfric's crossbowmen were rolling all 1s last turn.